Frustrated because your business is down and your IT department can’t find ways to respond? If you’ve structured your financial reporting on IT as I suggested in my prior blog, you should be able to quickly look at the following actions and evaluate their desirability and impact:

1. Stop projects – Make each project rejustify itself with a new hurdle rate.

2. Lengthen refresh cycles – There is really no good reason to upgrade PCs these days, and many vendors’ software packs contain fixes for functions you don’t use. The next time IT tells you they want upgrade because Microsoft has put out a new version, ask them, “So what?” more

What is the largest component of IFRS conversion costs? According to KPMG, the answer is information technology.

The firm estimates that 50 percent to 70 percent of a typical conversion effort’s costs relates to IT.

This puzzles at least one expert … more

As our world continues to evolve, many publishers and editors have asked me to contribute a regular blog to the ongoing information cycle. Up until now I have resisted. I have worried about (1) the amount of time it takes; (2) the demand to regularly post; and (3) whether I can respond to comments in a timely manner given my extensive travel schedule.

But mostly I have wondered if I would have relevant things to say. My staff has assured me that I have more than enough opinions, and my wife and kids agree. And when it comes to finance transformation, I have several points of view on what we need to STOP doing and what we should START doing instead. more

… At the very least, it’s continuing in the corporate world. Two-thirds of respondents to a recent survey by Deloitte indicated that their companies still were doing carve-outs and divestitures, despite the economy.

The most common reason for the break-ups was to jettison assets that weren’t core to the companies’ strategies, which was noted by 66 percent of respondents. About half of the survey-takers said that generating cash was a motive – not surprising, given the economy. more