There’s some good news, for a change, on the state taxation front this week: After 2 years of steady and scary declines (as I noted here and here), states’ tax receipts are finally showing signs of a turnaround. more

Extensible business reporting language (XBRL) becomes a requirement for financial disclosure in 2011 in the U.S. and much of the world. In the process, many expect XBRL to bring about convergence of U.S. GAAP and IFRS. Additionally, some hope that it will finally get the CFO enthused about technology tools. “Finance is the last frontier of automation,” observed Jaideep Shah, Senior Product Manager, Fujitsu, and David Taylor, VP, Strategy & Global Business Development, Trintech, during a recent XBRL tools webinar

“Finance creates a critical product for the company,” noted Shah and Taylor. But unlike other departments, which have ERP, CRM, supply chain management, CAD systems, procurement systems, and such, finance operates “without the benefit of a production platform and/or automated system of record.” Unless, maybe, you consider the GL the automated system of record.

Gartner picks up on finance’s technology shortcoming in a recent report. “XBRL can provide more capability that can improve external and internal financial reporting and transparency; however, firms are still in the process of learning.” Shah and Taylor identified a number of areas where XBRL tools can deliver greater finance automation benefits beyond just XBRL tagging. more

The ink is barely dry on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and already companies are marking down earnings for the first quarter and complaining that a tax provision in the law will force them to cut back on retiree benefits. more

On March 15, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) presented an updated version of Restoring American Financial Stability, a bill that’s designed to restore stability and bring transparency to the American financial system. Contained within what’s known as “The Dodd Bill” is a section on over-the-counter derivatives. Here, it appears that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The language in the ‘‘Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010,” which is a revised version of the bill Senator Dodd introduced last year, appears to offer end users, including corporations, an exemption from the requirement to move their derivatives transactions to exchanges. However, that’s not actually the case, says Sam Peterson, senior advisor in the government and regulatory advisory practice with Chatham Financial. “Corporate end users still have to meet stringent conditions” in order to keep their derivatives transactions over-the-counter. What’s more, even if a company meets the exemption requirements, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) doesn’t have to allow the exemption, Peterson adds. more

Who would have predicted these outcomes as the best critical success factors to achieve the full vision of an optimized Performance Management framework? (Click on Fullscreen for a larger view.)

You need a lot of factors to ultimately contribute to successfully achieving the full vision of the Performance Management framework!

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March Madness Brackets for Optimized Performance Management