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Showing posts with the label CFO

Taking your Board to the Cloud

If you want to convince your Board of Directors on cloud adoption, a good place is to begin is with a SAAS (Software as a Service Solution) for the Members of your companies Board. Do you  know  in every board meeting confidentiality, integrity and availability are the key for Board members and they also need to be kept informed of various actions taken by your Company. The  important events are the quarterly Board Meeting, Extraordinary Board Meeting and the Annual General Body Meeting. Most Board Meetings start with preparing a Agenda and a Board Note which highlights the points to be discussed and approved by the Board of Directors. This has to be prepared and circulated among Board Members with utmost secrecy since any leakage will harm the company and may lead to regulatory non-compliance. It takes a number of days to prepare the Board Notes and the weight of the completed Board Notes paper dossier is heavy and need to be securely delivered to the Directors...

CIO Journey to the Corner Office - A reality or a Fantasy !

Recently I was in a panel discussion in a Seminar and the question of the CIO's journey to the corner office as the CEO of the Company. Unfortunately the instances of the CIO transforming to a CEO are few in the world of business and there are number  of reasons logically this transformation is possible but in a Real world it is a fantasy. Let us examine the qualities of a good CIO the first of course is being a good team player, second political acumen to survive and please the various stake holders in business and the last is the IT prowess. CIO's who are successful do excel in people management and handling corporate warfare and wading through uncertain cycles in the business. But are these qualities enough to make them the CEO, there are certain factors missing, the CIO never leads the business troops which is essential to be a CEO, neither does the CEO interact with the Board on a regular basis in most companies, the CIO is drowned in budgets,data and analysis whereas ...

EDP CFO & Cloud Computing

EDP was the origin of computing in business, it was the acronym for "Electronic Data Processing", The  EDP department was a busy factory during salary computation, closing of the financial books and also month end sales and inventory management and finally MIS (Management Information System) . There were no Microsoft workstation in those days, no lotus 123 just reams of printout in high speed printers which were transferred neatly into transparencies with marker pens ! The EDP was always under the control of the CFO - the chief financial office and EDP manager was a powerful person who had to be reliable and accomplished in technology. EDP began with punched cards, then tapes and so on ; today they are relics, but the EDP department was the temple of information, it was the knowledge bank of the business and access to it was restricted. The CFO was the lord and master of the EDP department because the first baby steps of data processing was accounting,...