The early bird gets the worm.

Just ask 3M, the St Paul, Minn.-based diversified technology company, which participated in the SEC’s XBRL voluntary filing program (FVP) well before XBRL filing was mandated.

Why did it take the trouble? “First and foremost, 3M wanted to be fully prepared,” says Tom Jacob, financial manager, external reporter for 3M. “However, we also wanted to ensure that our issues and concerns were addressed, including making sure that most of our financial statement captions would be covered in the taxonomy to limit the need for us to create company-specific extensions.”

Jacob points out that the company also benefited from sharing lessons and practices with other early-bird program participants. I asked him several questions about his experience with the intention of helping not-so-early birds strengthen their own XBRL adoption processes. more

Some time ago, The Wall Street Journal had a great piece about the increasing use of the term “headwind.” As the Journal points out, “To hear executives tell it, headwinds are to blame for the weak sales of cars, tires, paint, and books. Just what are these headwinds? Everything from high-fuel prices to slow foot traffic in handbag stores to rising newsprint costs.”

And everyone is getting into the headwind act, sprinkling the term in their addresses to analysts, shareholders, et al. Users include Rick Wagoner, CEO of GM; Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo; and G. Kennedy Thompson, CEO of Wachovia, among others.

The term itself is not very interesting. It’s sort of intuitive in its meaning. What is interesting, however, is how organizations talk about these headwinds as a way to seemingly absolve themselves of accountability. GM has been doing mediocre while some of their foreign competitors are holding up OK, right? Are they not facing the same “headwinds”? Or perhaps their headwinds are weaker because they execute and innovate better? What about Google as compared to Yahoo?

At the same time, when the market or economy is doing well, how many of these CEOs will speak about a tailwind helping them out? When things are good, it is generally a cocktail of genius, innovation, our people, products, and “customer-centricity” which drive this. It’s not the fact that the market is growing at 5 percent or 10 percent and we’re just rising with the tide. And even though we may know that is the case, we’d rather take credit and attribute the successes to our management prowess.

I’m undecided. Are headwinds really the problem or just hot air? ###

As CFOs and treasurers continue to find external funding tight, more are looking at freeing up cash from their own operations — particularly their supply chains. A recent report, “Supply Chain Management: A Source of Corporate Liquidity,” by financial research firm Celent, identifies steps companies can take to do this. More information on the report is available here.

At many leading companies, improvements and efficiencies in supply chain functions that impact the P&L, such as the introduction of Six Sigma practices and other production efficiencies, already have been made, the report notes. So, execs now are turning their attention to functions that flow through to the balance sheet, like AP, AR, and inventory holdings. more

As Washington starts addressing the large and complex health care reform issue, there are other pieces of the employee benefits pie worthy of attention.

In the retirement savings arena, President Obama’s budget includes a proposal that would require employers that don’t presently offer a retirement plan to automatically enroll workers in a direct-deposit Individual Retirement Account (IRA). more

A few years ago, I wrote of the scramble by CFOs to document the finance department processes in the wake of the various scandals that led to Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory mandates. For many, identifying specific financial processes was a revelation.

Back then, a leading HMO had been put into receivership in large part because its finance processes were invisible and out of control. A $90 million loss suddenly morphed into a $200-plus million loss. Ooops. Management didn’t know what processes they had, what they did, and how they operated. The lack of finance process transparency obscured the real condition of the company.

The HMO clearly needed to get its financial processes under control. Today, organizations face suddenly swelling losses and the need to reduce staff. This requires that they not only identify and streamline financial processes but also that they optimize them. In short, they need modern business process management (BPM). more