FSN - White Papers

The CFO as Corporate Catalyst: The Role of Finance Process Excellence

Innovation on its own is no longer a dependable and enduring source of competitive advantage. New products and services are copied within months and the widespread availability of affordable new technology has lowered the barriers to competition. In this environment what matters most is the ability to evolve and implement new business models, supported by world class business processes and it is larger enterprises with their rich store of experience and ‘know-how’, coupled with their global reach, resources and business processes that are poised to take best advantage of the situation. Increasingly, it is the CFO as “Catalyst” to whom many organizations are turning for help, says Gary Simon, FSN (Financial Systems News) editor in this new FSN/Oracle white paper.

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Cadency™ "Restoring the Rhythm of Finance™ to the Record-to-Report Process"

Despite the supreme importance of the Record to Report (R2R) process, it is historically one of the most neglected and fragmented management processes. It is clear that existing approaches to financial governance based on loosely coupled suites of ERP/CPM applications, spreadsheets and collections of niche applications sourced from multiple vendors are not delivering the ‘goods’. So is it time to call change?

In this white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor, examines “Cadency™”, a ground-breaking solution from Trintech which has been designed from the outset to offer a paradigm shift in the way that the R2R process is managed and which in one overarching environment brings together the key elements of reconciliation, tasks and issue monitoring (Certification); risk assessment and controls (Compliance) and the management of financial documents, e-filings, XBRL and disclosures (Completion).

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Mastering Big Data: CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity

So profound is the potential impact of Big Data that the World Economic Forum considers it to be a new class of economic asset, akin to human capital and natural resources such as oil and gold. In this new FSN/Oracle white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor, examines why Big Data is becoming increasingly important to CFOs and the strategies and solutions that CFOs can put into place to ensure that investments in big data projects meet management expectations and deliver real value to the organization.

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Social Media at the Tipping Point: Why CFOs Must Get 'Social'

According to a 2012 McKinsey survey of 1,500 C-levels worldwide, most say that three key trends in digital business – namely, big data and analytics, digital marketing and social- media tools, and new mobile and cloud computing platforms - are strategic priorities at their companies. Over a third of these executives predict that these technologies will boost operating profits by 10 percent over the next three years. Yet which of these emerging technologies should CFOs consider when looking to drive real business value?

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The New Competitive Advantage - Strategic CFOs Embrace the Cloud

In the next three years, 53% of CFOs estimate that over half of their enterprise transactions will be delivered through the cloud, up from the 12 percent who use that delivery mechanism today. In this new FSN/Oracle white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor provides CFOs with a strategic playbook on how to leverage the cloud to drive greater agility in response to economic and competitive change.

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Managing Emerging Enterprise Risks

Historically, Enterprise Risk Management has not received the attention it deserves. It has such negative connotations and few people want to engross themselves in a management activity that is seemingly unproductive. Despite this unhelpful image, Risk Management is leaping up the corporate agenda, propelled by unprecedented economic volatility and encouraged by a growing awareness that it can contribute to value creation and sustained profitability. In this new FSN white paper written with the help of Oracle, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor looks at the positive side of Enterprise Risk management.

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Restoring harmony to the 'Last Mile' of Finance with Cadency Complete

In this new FSN white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor explores how a recently launched ground-breaking Disclosure Management product called “Cadency Complete” from Trintech utilises ‘Best in Class’ technology from Microsoft, Adobe and Fujitsu for the three pillars of disclosure management, namely; document authoring, content management and XBRL.

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"Is it time to replace your old accounting system?"

Many of the bookkeeping, accounting and financial management software packages deployed in businesses today were designed and developed more than two decades ago. They were built for a different era, when the global economy was growing strongly and certainly long before the internet and e-commerce took hold. So is your business held back by old systems? In this white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor considers how a Cloud-based solution such as FinancialForce.com can automate entire processes, encourage collaboration across departments and enable the production of insightful management information.

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"Driving Sustainable Growth" - Value-adding tools and techniques that contribute to long term success.

Sustainable growth is surprisingly difficult to achieve. The evidence shows that very few companies, probably less than 20 percent are able to drive growth consistently from one decade to another. In this new white paper, FSN and Oracle illustrate how new technologies and techniques are helping to clear out the clutter and streamline processes so that businesses can devote more of their energy to value-adding activities that contribute to long term success.

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"Have You Outgrown Your Accounting System?"

Entry level systems that suit an early stage business tend to focus on the bookkeeping essentials and are not really designed or equipped to support a company when it approaches its next stage of maturity and is experiencing, say, rapid growth in volumes and there is pressure to automate its processes. In this white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor considers how a Cloud-based solution such as FinancialForce.com can provide the detailed insights that management need to steer the business and provide the process support to ensure a high level of responsiveness, competitiveness and customer service.

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