^The APQC Blog

The financial management (FM) research team at APQC is rolling out a series called Blueprint for Success. The first report focuses on accounts payable and includes definitions, detailed analysis, and benchmarking data on seven AP key performance indicators. But many of you may be wondering what a blueprint is and how it can help your organization.

 Jeff Mooers, IT Manager Business Services at Allison Transmissions and Claire Wybrow, Business Architect at Allegient LLC, explain how the company launched an enterprise-wide transformation to unify and curate all official business processes and policies.

Learn more about APQC’s 2016 Process Conference is October 3-7.

How well do you know your neighbors? You may share a wall/fence with them, but do you even know their names?  Have you ever talked to them about anything more than the weather (or maybe that temperamental mail delivery guy)?

I’ve got a confession: Because I’m a “process person” I didn’t expect to be embraced by the attendees at APQC’s recent Knowledge Management (KM) conference.

(Third and final installment in my series on Chip Conley and Airbnb)

I tease Chip Conley that it seems to be his destiny to be a serial disruptor of the hospitality industry, first as founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre, the second largest boutique hotel company in America, and now as the head of Global Hospitality and Strategy with Airbnb, a hot marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world.

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 analysis (FP&A). Unsurprisingly, recent APQC research shows that there is strong enthusiasm for enhancing FP&A; in tandem with that, a growing number of CFOs are sanctioning a closer look at cloud-based applications for planning and reporting.

The evolving “Internet of Things” (IoT) is bringing about a new level of interconnectivity among devices, people, and organizations. The acceleration of IT interconnectivity in the supply chain function also creates potential risks if organizations do not ensure that they are making the right investments and have a plan of what they hope to get out of their IoT investments. The physical supply chain and the infrastructure that supports it (from manufacturing to delivery) are rarely designed with point-to-point IT risk management in mind.

This month APQC’s supply chain management research team is kicking off a regular blog series called Off the Chain. In each post we’ll highlight trending content from APQC’s Knowledge Base that we think you’ll love.

(Part Two of a three-part series on Chip Conley and Airbnb.)

I recently had the chance to interview  Alice Chung, Senior Manager of Field Operations & Information Management at Genentech about understanding the value of data-driven decision making and how to engage the business to meet its needs and overcome resistance.