Finance folks tend to think in terms of annual budgets, balance sheets, Capital vs. Operations, and cost centers. IT folks think in terms of keeping things running and delivering on requests. Rarely do the two match up, certainly without help.

It is possible to create a view of IT spend that can be used for both managing IT and feeding the Finance and Accounting (F&A) processes. Done correctly, it will also give the company tools to speed decision-making on expenditure and create ownership of consumption, which drives much of IT cost. more

Hello, world. I’m Richard Ross, and I have an opinion on IT. In over 30 years in IT, I’ve built and sold it, bought and supported it, and advised others on how to do the same. If I didn’t have an opinion by now, I suspect you would be wondering what I was doing with my time for all those years.

This blog is about IT in finance, which is a very broad topic indeed. Its intended community is CFOs who might have IT reporting to them or at least be responsible for IT financials included in their companies’ reporting. It will also be useful to investors. We’ll cover a broad spectrum of topics that I think you should know about, ranging from IT management to regulatory requirements to specific products and events.

I’m going to start the blog with several posts about what have emerged for me as universal truths regarding how one looks at and manages IT. These will serve as a primer on some basics and help to define terms that we can use going forward. I expect we’ll refer back to them in the days to come. After and in parallel to those, I’ll post commentary on topical events and, of course, in response to your posts. ###

In a now well-publicized buttocks kicking, Jon Stewart ripped Jim Cramer and CNBC apart on his news show. He covers a lot in the segment (video embedded below), using his trademark intellect and wit, but in essence he points to CNBC as a group that has self-anointed themselves as financial market experts yet did not see the market tsunami coming nor really held accountable the people they have access to, e.g., the CEOs they converse with. At one point, Stewart calls Cramer a “snake oil salesman” and Cramer agrees. Interesting. more

In an article originally published in BPM Magazine, co-author Gary Cokins and I made the case for the Chief Performance Officer in “Why Corporate Performance Management Needs its Own Office.” In this article, we stated, “As uncertainty increases in the external environment, corporate managers are finding it more and more difficult to reach consensus on decisions. Performance information and performance management methodologies help enable decision-making processes, so some businesses are dedicating senior leaders to overseeing them.”

The only differences between writing then and now is that the market-driven and political pressures have increased and more organizations have adopted CPM offices. But what is the background for this office, and what are the characteristics of the CPM office? I was fortunate to function as the CPO while an SVP in the office of the CEO of Crown Castle International, and thereafter conducted research with leading companies on this topic that resulted in my book Five Key Principles of CPM (John Wiley & Sons). more

Is the investment company that manages the target fund in your 401(k) tweaking its design to better serve plan participants? It’s an important question, especially if a target fund is the default option for automatic enrollment.

In the wake of losses in some target date or “lifestyle” funds that exceeded losses in most Standard & Poor’s stock funds, many fund companies are making efforts to adjust their offerings to achieve the right mix; their proactive stance reflects possible regulation of the composition and marketing of the funds. more