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The IRS has Mastered Accounts Receivable...and You Can Too!
Would you rather owe someone money or have someone owe you money? Maybe it’s just me, but I think both of these options are fairly uncomfortable. But, in the business world, owing and being owed money comes with the territory. And in no case is this truer than in that of the ultimate ower (and,…
How Design Thinking Can Help Finance Professionals Achieve their 2018 Goals
At the beginning of the year we surveyed a group of 260 finance professionals from across industries and regions to find out what their priorities were for 2018. The results were at once simple and complex. The top two finance function priorities for 2018 were: Implement new…
Tesla Trouble Teaches Not to Bite Off More Automation than You Can Chew
What comes to mind when you hear the name “Elon Musk”? APQC—right? Just kidding. Even though Mr. Musk has no affiliation with APQC, you could be forgiven for thinking that he does, since both he and APQC are such vociferous proponents of robotic process automation (RPA). We believe that RPA is one…
Digitalization and Other Reasons 2018 Isn’t Just Another Year in Process Management
We’re roughly a quarter of the way through 2018 and from what I can tell so far, this year isn’t too different from last year. Everyone is still ad dicted to their smart phones, the weather is still crazy, and the Houston Rockets are still the best team in professional basketball. Yep…hardly…
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): The Cover-Worthy Revolution Hidden on Page Twelve
If you didn’t think cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI) were at the top of everybody’s mind at the beginning of 2017, you certainly could be forgiven for thinking so by the end the year. It seemed like not a week went by that a cover of a major business periodical/website wasn’t…
Silver Bells, Marketing, and Sales
(Hopefully you read the blog title with a Deep South accent.) Happy holidays, reader! I’m going to begin this post with a slightly embarrassing self-quote from 5 years ago, when I was a first-year MBA student. The following is an excerpt from the introduction I wrote for a marketing plan…
Could You Please Direct Me to the Talent Aisle?
Talent is all around us and we don’t even know it. Well, hold on. Let me modify that statement. Talent is all around us and sometimes we don’t even know it. I’m a volleyball player, so when I compete against a tall, athletic-looking guy, I’m generally not surprised to find out that he’s a…
Introducing the Same Old, Brand New, Digital Me!
You can tell a lot about how digital your life has become simply by examining the thirty minutes before and after you sleep each night. When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was swipe the screen of my [digital] phone to turn off my [digital] alarm clock, which was blaring Your Love is…
Overconfidence in Full Effect
Every so often, I hear the hilarious statistic cited that ninety percent of drivers think that they are better than the average driver. It goes without saying that this is a mathematical impossibility. And it demonstrates the proven cognitive bias known as “illusory superiority.” Why, in an…
2017 Is the Year of the Case Study
At APQC, we like to maintain constant contact with our members to ensure that our research aligns as closely as possible with their business needs. While our members’ interests and challenges fluctuate from year to year, one piece of feedback we receive from them remains constant: they love case…