The recent launch of the AI Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 corporations and research institutions engaged in artificial intelligence (AI) development (including AMD, CERN, Cornell University, Dell Technologies, IBM, Intel, Linux Foundation, Meta, NASA, Oracle, ServiceNow and Sony Group), aims to achieve the following objectives:
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments,
Consolidate/Close/Report,
Continuous Supply Chain & ERP
We conducted our recent Smart Financial Close Dynamic Insights Research in part to assess to what extent the substantial disruptions of the pandemic have impacted the accounting close. When office lockdowns began in the first quarter of 2020, many finance departments were challenged to conduct the quarterly close remotely without face-to-face interactions. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission was so concerned that corporations would be unable to meet filing deadlines...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Smart Financial Close
insightsoftware offers a portfolio of software designed mainly for the office of finance to handle reporting, budgeting and planning, consolidation and close management, business intelligence (BI) and analytics, as well as compliance. The company’s applications directly address a core issue confronting many finance department executives today: Productivity. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reported that 17% of accountants retired or resigned in the 2020-22 period, cutting the available...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Analytic Data Platforms,
Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting,
Consolidate/Close/Report
The emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues has been growing for some time. I participated in the development of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) as a software industry expert more than a decade ago. The rise of ESG’s profile in corporate reporting is the latest evolution of “responsible investing,” a topic that goes back centuries in the west. The modern era of responsible investing took form in the United States beginning in the 1960s and then...
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Topics:
Governance,
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
ESG,
Environmental,
Inclusion
SuiteWorld, the annual user conference from Oracle NetSuite, focused on three topics: artificial intelligence, a reimagination of the role NetSuite can play in managing an organization and emphasizing the value to existing customers of using more of what NetSuite has to offer.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Consolidate/Close/Report
Because artificial intelligence is top-of-mind, Workday spent a great deal of time on the topic at its recent Workday Rising annual user group meeting in San Francisco. It was front and center in the general sessions, in the announcements made at the event and in the product roadmaps.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments,
AI and Machine Learning
In accounting terms, working capital includes current assets (short-term items such as cash, money due from customers and inventory) and current liabilities (typically payments due to suppliers and loan amounts that must be repaid within one year). Working capital management is a prime function of the finance organization, designed to balance often-conflicting objectives related to revenue, liquidity, risk and profitability. The basics of working capital management date back to ancient clay...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
CFO,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments,
Accounts Payable,
Treasury,
Accounts Receivable,
Working Capital
Over the past three years, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (or PCAOB, sometimes pronounced “peekaboo”) has found an increasing prevalence of auditing deficiencies in its inspections of accounting firms. PCAOB was established as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in the wake of several major accounting scandals. The agency acts as the auditor of auditors with the objective of being a neutral arbiter of the quality of these inspections. It recently indicated that approximately...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
audit,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
virtual audit,
Consolidate/Close/Report
We added purchasing, sourcing and payments to our core Office of Finance focus areas this year to reflect new and important opportunities to use technology to gain effectiveness through greater efficiency. Technology continues to lubricate the wheels of commerce, aided by a financial services sector that is constantly innovating, responding to market-driven opportunities to reduce costs, increase demand or lower risk. Ventana Research asserts that, in many cases, technology makes new forms or...
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Topics:
Product Information Management,
Operations & Supply Chain,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments,
Continuous Supply Chain & ERP
The six costliest words in managing a finance department are, “we’ve always done it this way.” Closing the books is the process of finalizing and summarizing the financial activities of a business for a specific accounting period (typically a month, quarter, or fiscal year). It involves completing various tasks to ensure that all revenue, expense, and other financial transactions are properly recorded, accounts are balanced, and financial statements are prepared. Accounting processes are...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting,
Consolidate/Close/Report,
AI and Machine Learning