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CFOs Now Waking Up to Cyber Crime in AP
A new report on corporate payments fraud carries some stunning facts. The Association for Financial Professionals has released its 2017 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey. Seventy four percent of finance professionals reported that their organizations experienced “attempted or actual payments…
Finance Needs More Know-How
APQC recently conducted a survey of financial management professionals’ improvement goals and priorities. The results reveal vexing challenges in financial process standardization, labor cost reduction, and better decision support. These issues intersect—and not in a good way for many finance teams…
7 Cyber Security Questions CFOs Need Answers For
The growing sophistication of cyber-attacks has made it clear that even corporations with savvy prevention and protection systems are vulnerable. Cyber security is not just an IT issue but instead a cross-functional concern for the digital enterprise that requires attentive executive- and board-…
4 Tips for Using Financial Management Benchmarks Wisely
Finance professionals naturally understand the rationale of measuring managerial and operating progress, so wielding those measures’ corresponding benchmarks should be a straightforward exercise. But a word of caution is due. The impulse to act quickly with benchmarks can take a finance group in…
How Is Paper Still a Thing?
It’s almost 2017. The accounts payable (AP) manager has an abundance of technology innovations from which to choose to make the process run faster, better, and cheaper. For example, there are workflow automation solutions that help to reduce duplicate payments, late payments, strengthen internal…
The Finance Mission—A Good Time for Reflection
As we head into the last quarter of the business year, financial analysts are surely keen to see how useful their forays into data analytics will look when the final buzzer goes off. Have these efforts to buoy business performance paid off? What are CFOs planning to do to balance investments in new…
Finance Needs New Skills to Stay Relevant
Three quarters of finance executives who responded to a recent APQC survey are engaged in some form of finance function improvement. Unsurprisingly, CFOs want finance to push for greater cost-efficiency. That campaign will never end, especially as finance moves stridently toward robotics and…
Finance Transformation in 2016: Raising the Bar on Business Analysis
According to new research conducted by APQC, finance leaders are keenly aware of the need to improve the finance function. What’s so new about that? A lot, actually. For starters, business managers are changing their tune when it comes to what they want from finance. They now insist that finance…
Finance Process Efficiency: the Hunt Continues
When an overwhelming majority of finance executives say they want to be sure their financial process costs are in line, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve stumbled into a time warp. APQC has been tracking these efficiency metrics for many years. CFOs and corporate controllers in the U.S., Europe, and…
Get Serious about Finance Training
The current fascination with using big data to sharpen business decision making is not lost on finance and accounting leaders. They know it is imperative that finance get up-to-speed with this powerful trend and learn how best to apply big data concepts in the realm of financial planning and…