by Felicien | Nov 13, 2018 | Education
The controller plays an essential role when it comes to driving profitability and growth through enhanced financial visibility. Therefore, chief financial officers should strive to collaborate closely with controllers. Successful CFOs make it a priority to make sure their organization takes full advantage of the experience and knowledge of their controller.
Here are the top five questions to ask your controller to ensure they are operating at the highest level of accuracy and efficiency possible.
1. How Many Manual Journal Entries Are Made During the Closing Process?
Too many manual journal entries can extend the duration of a closing period significantly. A large number of manual journal entries made during the closing process is also often a sign of hidden issues. It can hide errors and anomalies that have roots that are broad and systematic. An excessive number of entries can also be an indicator of variable accounting processes.
2. Is There An Integrated System for Both Operating Metrics and Financial Information?
It is in the best interest of most organizations to have just one reporting system. If you have more than one reporting system, a significant amount of time will be spent dealing with conflicting definitions and reconciling differences. Therefore, a good question to ask your controller is if there is an integrated system for both operating metrics and financial information. If there is not an integrated system in place, you should inquire about what steps your organization should take to establish such a system. For cohesiveness and simplicity, it is well worth the effort to work towards having just one reporting system.
3. Why Are There So Many Reports?
If the financial department, for example, distributes dozens of reports on a periodic basis, it may be a good idea to ask your controller why there are so many reports. Your controller may find that many of the individuals who had requested the reports are no longer with the organization. It will save your organization a significant amount of time and resources to stop producing the reports that are no longer valuable or in use.
4. What Are We Doing in Excel?
Millions of people across the world use Excel due to its versatility and ease of use. However, while Excel certainly has its advantages, it also has its disadvantages. Excel is difficult for collaborative purposes, for example. Also, it is easy to make mistakes in Excel and these mistakes are often very difficult to find. Excel is ideal for prototyping new processes rapidly. Once a process has been stabilized, it’s best to move to an environment that is more automated, secure, and collaborative than Excel.
5. How Many Transactions Are There in Each Department?
Inquire about how many vendor payments and invoices there are. You should also ask about how many lines items for each are in existence. Ask about how quality is measured. You can use this information to focus on improving quality and efficiency in the long run as well as to plan staffing levels.
6. Who Has Access to the Accounting System?
Ideally, only one administrator should have access to the full functionality of the accounting system. There should be a documented approval process in place for the purpose of making changes to the system.
7. How Many Invoices and Sales Orders Have Been Re-Billed or Canceled?
Not only do you want to know how many sales orders and invoices have been canceled or re-billed, but you also want to find out the reason behind these cancellations. A high number of canceled or re-billed invoices and sales orders is an indication that your system needs to be redesigned.
8. Which Areas Should We Invest in First?
Your controller will know best which areas should be invested in first when it comes to your finance department. You want to focus on the biggest problem areas and redirect resources to the places that need them the most. Focus on adopting new technology to automate and simplify processes.
If you want to be a successful CFO, you should take advantage of the knowledge and experience of your controller. Pick your controller’s brain by asking them the eight questions discussed above.
by Felicien | Nov 12, 2018 | Education
It wasn’t long ago; most businesses believed outsourcing their IT was unnecessary. They could easily hire an individual, with some basic technical knowledge, to cover the day-to-day operations in-house. However, those chores have changed. With increased security threats, stiffer government regulations, ongoing technology training for employees, and the push towards augmented intelligence and machine learning, successful businesses started shifting away from that old model.
What are the Four Tech Chores You Can Delegate For Outsourcing?
Today IT outsourcing is no longer a chore, but rather an expected path most businesses automatically choose. With the recent advancements in information technology, over the past few years, startup business owners have avoided old-school IT chores and headaches by delegating the IT outsourcing. Their decision has reduced startup, labor and equipment costs.
Below we’ve listed the technologies you can easily delegate to an outsourced IT service provider, that will reduce business expenses, cut unnecessary labor costs, protect your information, and prevent unauthorized access to intruders.
1. Infrastructure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) — Let’s begin with outsourcing your equipment. You have the hardware, a network system, and servers. These are your physical assets on your premises. Were these assets ever inventoried? If any of your equipment went down, what’s the next step? Were there policies or SOPs created regarding the assets? How old are any of the assets?
These kinds of questions and chores you avoid when you shift over to outsourcing your infrastructure. But, without an infrastructure provider monitoring your IaaS, your company is exposed to unexpected downtime costs, plus the added labor costs with your in-house technician trying to determine the issue.
When you start constructing and maintaining your infrastructure, it’s neither easy or cheap. When you delegate the outsourcing of your IaaS, this is where your IT expenses drop. Just remember, the IaaS service provider will own and use their equipment. Instead of you, they are responsible and capable of running and troubleshooting the systems. What you pay for is either a monthly subscription or per-use.
2. Cloud Hosting
Cloud Hosting – allows your staff to access business information anywhere, at any time, using company assigned equipment or an employee’s personal laptop, tablet, or cell phone. When you host your cloud system, that becomes costly, plus the security risks are higher, especially if the technology is outdated.
When you delegate outsourcing to cloud technology, the days of having to maintain in-house cloud servers are over. As for moving forward you and your staff only use the cloud. Without the need for servers, that is equipment your company doesn’t have to purchase.
If you are new to Cloud Hosting, one more thing to know is that data and a network in the Cloud are slightly different, but share the same basic principles as other environments. The next item of importance is that because the Cloud runs in data centers, that are staffed by experts in Cloud services, information stored in the Cloud is more secure than stored on servers on your premises.
3. Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity – When it comes to cybersecurity, this is where it comes to complete and secure protection. But, here’s where some due diligence, on your part, takes place. There are a few things business owners may not know but need to be brought up to speed when outsourcing this crucial IT function.
Virus scans are not Cybersecurity
In-house cyber protection is limited
Some IT and MSP companies only offer cybersecurity as a vendor
Cybersecurity experts specialize in anticipating and mitigating threats
Remember IT vendors usually tell you that your data is safe, but cybersecurity experts know, IT networks get built with security, if any, as an afterthought. And they will advise you that no single company can guarantee 100% data safety and protection.
That doesn’t mean the IT vendor doesn’t have tight security measures in place, only that cybersecurity experts know the vulnerabilities, and can offer an extra layer of cyber protection, the vendor can’t, that will prevent disasters, quarantine the breach, and resolve security issues quickly.
4. Email Hosting Services
Email Hosting Services – All it takes is one accidental email reply to get your system hacked and loaded up with ransomware. Due to ongoing efforts from hackers and cybercriminals, delegating email services to get outsourced, not only reduces IT system risks but can spot the activity before it makes it to an unsuspecting employee’s inbox.
When you outsource your email chores, there are quite a few benefits an in-house technician cannot provide or combat.
Email Migration—This is a service to simplify any correspondence. That would cover content conversion, email forwarding, and property mapping.
Security—Your business relies heavily on email for data transmission and must remain secure. Proactive security management gets set in place to monitor any potential vulnerabilities.
Filtering—Establishing inbound and outbound filtering criteria, eliminating spam from employee’s inboxes. Blocking sensitive emails and placed in the proper mailbox.
Employee Training—Employees taught how to spot phishing attempts, masked Adware, identifying social engineering emails attempts, or replying with personal information.
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by Felicien | Nov 12, 2018 | Education
There were fears of job losses and machines taking over, but what’s happening in the financial services industry is anything but that. The finance sector is claiming greater benefits with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence. Due to the unscripted power of AI, the creation of the New-Collar worker has emerged. The potential of AI evolving the next avatar of the financial services industry is more than evident.
What 4 Areas Has AI Started Transforming the Financial Sector?
Regardless of where you sit on the AI argument, it’s evident; Artificial Intelligence has made an enormous impact around the world. There will be no turning back. Big data, customer satisfaction, and more convenience are no longer on the horizon. All are here to stay. Organizations and institutions will be required to collaborate and foster a favorable environment if they want to be successful.
Currently, the financial industry has extended an olive branch of acceptance, wanting more interaction with this technology. The four areas AI has made the biggest impression with banks, lending institutions, and creditors are listed below.
1. Risk Assessment:
The basics of AI is gathering and learning from past data. In the Financial Services sector, where records and bookkeeping are paramount to any business is how AI will succeed. Credit cards, for example, use credit scores. Those scores are gathered and used to determine who is and isn’t eligible for a credit card.
Now, let’s add that person’s number of loans currently active, what their loan payment habits are, and the current number of existing credit cards in their possession. All of that personal information gathered together, gets used to customize the interest rate on a credit card, and based on that collected data the financial institution may or may not offer their card.
When you have a system, that can access, scan, and sort through tens of thousands of personal and business financial records instantly; the results will provide AI with an accurate solution, and make or not make a recommendation for a loan or credit, all based on what it has gathered and learned. That reduces any risk the lending institution has to assume.
2. Fraud Detection And Fraud Management:
Every business does their best to reduce their risks that may surround them. Financial institutions are no different. The loan a bank extends to you is someone else’s money, which is why financial institutions and banks view fraud with extreme prejudice and scrutiny. And how artificial intelligence gets used for fraud detection, identification, and security.
From what AI has learned from past spending habits it can point out odd transaction behaviors. For instance, when using a credit card in one country, but only a few hours early, the card got swiped in another country, thousands of miles away, on another continent.
Furthermore, there is a unique feature about AI when used for fraud detection. Due to not having any bias about learning, when AI raises a red flag on what’s considered a regular transaction and a human being corrects that, the system will learn from that experience and remember that behavior. From that point forward it begins to make more sophisticated decisions about what can be considered fraud on any particular account.
3. Financial Advisory Services:
Begin to look forward to more Robo-advisors. Robo-advisors or Robo-advisers are a class of financial adviser that provide financial advice or investment management online with moderate to minimal human intervention. They offer digital financial information based on mathematical rules or algorithms.
Besides these advisors, there is another interesting advisory field emerging known as bionic advisory. Along with calculations from machines, it will include human insight. That is where collaboration comes into play. AI is the component, and the human offers viewpoints, and together provide options and is more efficient. It becomes a balance between machine and human interaction with future financial decisions.
4. Trading:
Data scientists and computers determine future patterns in the market, and investment companies rely heavily on them. Their findings do affect investments and selling when predicting the future accurately. That is another area the financial industry is transforming with machine learning, because of their ability to gather and crunch massive amounts of data quickly.
These devices can be taught to observe patterns from past prediction data and forecast how these particular patterns might repeat in the future. Even with anomalies, AI machines can be programmed to study and find the anomaly triggers to assist with any future forecasting.
From what AI has learned it would then make portfolio suggestions, based on each person’s demand and the individual’s risk appetite. So if a person has a lower risk appetite, they would receive alerts when the market might fall, but then the high-risk appetite person can count on AI for decisions on when to buy, sell, or hold stock.
In Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence is transforming the financial industry now and not in the future. It’s transforming that sector through risk assessment, fraud detection, fraud management, financial advisory services, and trading. It helps companies with saving money on hiring humans and also avoiding human errors in this process. With AI still in its budding stages and it’s rapid learning speed, the finance sector will evolve quicker. As you continue to watch the industry, expect that the prospects are going to lead to smarter trading, minor losses and excellent customer experiences.
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by Felicien | Nov 12, 2018 | Education
In late 2000, Kirk Lippold was the captain of the U.S.S. Cole, an Aegis-class guided-missile destroyer. The Cole was severely damaged by terrorists who pulled alongside in a ship disguised as a garbage barge and set off a massive explosion. The Cole had a 40’ by 60’ hole ripped in its side; 17 sailors died, and another 39 were injured. The crew, working together under the Captain’s direction, saved the ship and was able to stabilize it and get it towed to a repair facility. It is still in service.
What Are The Lessons?
In a presentation to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Captain Lippold presented some lessons from the Cole crisis. They are:
It’s not a question of if, but when. You, as an executive, will face a crisis at some point.
You have to lay the foundations in staff attitude and skills for dealing with a crisis.
The first step is always to calm yourself. Everyone in the organization will be looking to you for direction and inspiration.
Remember that there are multiple perspectives. Be open to what your staff is telling you.
Not making a decision is not an option. Not to decide is to decide.
Act in the now, but always ask, “What do I do next?”
When the crisis is over, ask whether the situation just requires a reset or a whole new way of thinking.
When doing any of these things, brutal intellectual honesty is critical. Without it, you are not facing reality; you are merely crafting a fiction which will provide you with no resources when the next crisis hits.
Why Intellectual Honesty Is Critical
Part of intellectual honesty is not “buying” the organization’s vision of itself. This does not mean that real skills and dedication should not be recognized. It knows that every organization has blind spots. Facebook is a good example. So is Uber. Whatever their merits or demerits, their corporate culture led both management and employees to regard themselves as invincible.
From the other side of the coin, look at all the IT companies that had really superior products that vanished over the course of time. Consider DEC. Consider the AT&T personal computer line. If a company has excellent products but cannot market them effectively, those products will vanish from the marketplace.
It has been jokingly remarked that if AT&T’s marketing team were put in charge at KFC, the signs above the restaurants would read “Hot Dead Chicken!”
If a company has superior products but does not recognize what sets them apart from others in the market, their ads will not reflect that. At most, they will be mediocre.
Another part of intellectual honesty is recognizing just how severe a potential crisis can be. “It won’t be as bad as we think” is a first cousin to “it can’t happen here.” The intellectually honest answer is that “Yes, it can be that bad, and yes, it is going to happen here.” No organization is immune.
Captain Lippold emphasized that a leader in a crisis must be simultaneously in and out of the picture. He must be listening to subordinates, trusting them to convey what is really happening, yet at the same time recognizing that the staff is relying on him or her for leadership. He must also be thinking ahead to what is the next step. If all of that is not done, the executive in charge is deprived of accurate information and may well, by failing to think ahead, turn one big crisis into a cascade of smaller ones.
Communication Is Key
It does go without saying that for a spirit of teamwork, respect for executive authority, and professional commitment to existing, dialogue must have been frank and honest from the start. This is essential for building trust, and if trust is not present, all the authority in the world will not produce a good outcome in a crisis.
Does IT Have A Communications Problem?
One of the things to note about recent IT-related crises at Experian, Uber, Facebook, and now Google, is the tendency to not reveal problems, the issue information that minimizes them, then walk that back, and finally reveal the scope and the relevant details only after public pressure is applied.
One thing IT can learn from politics is that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. In every case, the PR outcome for these companies would have been much better if everything had been revealed at once. As far as intellectual honesty is concerned, IT shops that have any interaction with the public need to view their responses from the general public’s angle and honestly ask them what their various possible responses would make them look like. This exercise could be quite revealing.
The Need To Anticipate The Worst
One reason the Cole is still in service is that the officers and crew had been relentlessly drilled in damage control. They had practice exercises in dealing with massive damage to the ship. They knew how to keep it in fighting condition even after an attack. When they had an actual crisis that could have sunk the ship, their training and the foresight showed. IT executives would be well advised to take the lesson to heart.
by Felicien | Nov 11, 2018 | Education
If you are experiencing problems with your Windows 10 Pro operating system, you are not alone. Thousands of users from the US, Japan, and South Korea flooded tech message boards late this week with complaints that their legitimately purchased software was deactivating itself.
What Exactly Happened?
Starting on November 8, comments began to appear online from several users expressing frustration over the pop-up messages they received from Microsoft after booting up their computers. These messages included the error codes: 0xC004C003 or 0xC004C003, and incorrectly implied that the users were trying to run illegal copies of the Windows 10 Pro edition on their computers. Those affected by the glitch were then prompted to install the Windows 10 Home edition or to purchase a genuine copy of the Pro edition from the Microsoft store. Anyone who received a deactivation warning was still able to operate the computer using the Windows 10 Pro edition, although distracting watermarks were plastered across the screen.
Microsoft acknowledged that the company was fully aware of the DMR issue within hours of the first messages showing up online. A statement released from the company said it was still trying to determine the reason behind the deactivations to provide a fix, but at the time the exact cause was unknown. Engineers from Microsoft suspected that “some unspecified issue with the Windows Authentication servers” was the cause behind the deactivations.
On Friday, a day after Microsoft first address the deactivations, the company released an update about the bug:
“A limited number of customers experienced an activation issue that our engineers have now addressed. Affected customers will see the resolution over the next 24 hours as the solution is applied automatically. In the meantime, they can continue to use Windows 10 Pro as usual.”
As of Saturday, some users online were still reporting problems with their operating system.
Will This Affect Me?
The good news is that the deactivation problem seems to be affecting only a small portion of the total number of Windows 10 Pro edition users. Of the licenses which were affected, the vast majority of them were digitally updated from an early version of Windows. If you have not already received the warning after restarting your system, there is a good chance that your copy of the operating system is not affected by this bug. But for those who hit with the glitch, you have several options.
What Can I Do About It?
First, don’t panic and assume that you need to repurchase a new license for the Windows 10 Pro edition if you are still receiving a warning as of today. As long as you are using a genuine version of the operating system, there is no need to buy another copy, as the fix will automatically take effect. The best thing to do is just to wait. But if you are unwilling to wait, you can attempt to correct the issue on your own by running the Troubleshoot app. You can access the Troubleshoot app by going to Settings then clicking on Update & Security followed by Activation, and finally to Troubleshoot. This should correct the issue immediately.
