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Sizing up salaries: 2008 Salary Guide
November 2007: This report, prepared by Ajilon Finance based on data gathered by CFO Research Services, discusses salary data and employment trends for 2008. The Salary Guide provides salary ranges, by region, for the most common accounting and finance jobs, plus insights into CFOs' top priorities, their views on compensation and employment opportunities in finance, and their forecasts for hiring in the coming year.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by Ajilon Finance

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The Renewed Finance Function—Extending Performance Management Beyond Finance
November 2007: Finance faces competing demands: Business managers want the finance function to play a more active role in supporting their planning and decision making, while regulatory pressures pull finance toward a turbocharged controllership role. Senior finance executives in this study reveal a desire for closer collaboration with business unit management in developing business strategy, but struggle with their counterparts' lack of knowledge of financial concepts. This report argues that by implementing performance management systems throughout the organization finance and business unit managers will have better information for developing strategy. By doing so, they will contribute more effectively to the business activities that satisfy stakeholders.

Category: Performance Management
- Sponsored by SAP

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Preparing Finance Staff for the Future
November 2007: As companies come under increasing pressure to deliver sustained, profitable growth, it is critical that individual performance align with enterprise-level performance. When individuals lack necessary skills, enterprise performance can suffer. Our survey of senior finance executives reveals that professional development programs in finance are not only welcomed by staff—who view training as a privilege—but also yield positive results for both the individual and the organization as a whole.

Category: Strategies For The Finance Function
- Sponsored by ACS

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Driving a More Valuable Contribution from the Corporate Tax Function
November 2007: What steps are companies taking to align the tax function with broader enterprise objectives? While over 200 senior finance and tax executives who took our survey reveal a desire for tax to collaborate more effectively with other functions, especially with business operating units and their managers, this research identifies a shortfall in tax's ability to provide decision support to business management. The results of our research suggest there are organizational steps that companies can take that will yield a more effective tax function.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by Deloitte Tax LLP

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Look Closer, Look Further: How to Build a Better Business Case for Improving Information Capabilities
October 2007:Too many companies lack the management information they need to make business decisions confidently—that was the main finding in 2005's IQ Matters: Senior Finance and IT Executives Seek to Boost Information Quality. This report brings a new and more encouraging message to CFOs and CIOs: It doesn't have to be that way. In this study, our survey and in-depth interview program among senior finance executives around the world offer insight into how a broader view of information investments yields greater satisfaction, effectiveness, and understanding of the true cost of management information.

Category: Finance and Technology
- Sponsored by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

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Releasing Resources to Support Growth—The Long-Term Benefits of Finance Transformation
October 2007:In recent years, finance has worked hard to drive cost, complexity, error, and risk out of its routine business processes. Our survey of senior finance executives reveals that the finance function has freed time and resources to pursue high-value activities like decision support and financial planning and analysis as a result of transaction-processing automation.

Category: Finance and Technology
- Sponsored by Concur

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Corporate Performance Management: How Finance Can Implement a Winning Strategy
June 2007: The eighth Corporate Performance Management (CPM) event from CFO Conferences explored the new direction of CPM and its evolution as the role of the CFO expands beyond reporting, measuring and forecasting, into understanding enterprise-wide performance drivers and making strategic decisions. The conference conclusion paper summarizes the insights heard from leading CFOs and the successful case studies shared at the conference.

Category: Conference Conclusion Papers
- Sponsored by SAS

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Strategy Execution—Linking Value, Metrics, And Rewards
May 2007:In a highly competitive marketplace, successful strategy execution is often the key factor that separates top performers from the competition. In this study, we interviewed senior finance executives at more than 25 top-performing North American and European companies to learn how they use the tools and techniques of performance management to realize their business strategies. Through this interview program, we uncovered a series of common practices that, when applied, link business activities tightly to executing business strategy and, ultimately, to value creation.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by Deloitte

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CFOs' Views On Procurement—Information, Risk, And Money
May 2007:In their efforts to make and sell their wares to customers, companies of all types rely on inputs from a great many third parties. These vendors provide inputs—some mission critical, others mundane—to companies' production and operating processes, and the cost and availability of these inputs often have a direct impact on company performance. This study examines how CFOs see the procurement function as a source of cost savings and information to support decision making and business planning and explores finance executives' views on the risks posed by uneven performance in the procurement function.

Category: Outsourcing, Cost Control, and Other Practices
- Sponsored by Ariba

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Thinking Through Uncertainty - CFOs Scrutinize Non-Financial Risk
April 2007:This study examines the role of the CFO and the finance function in management of non-financial risks. Through a series of interviews, senior finance executives reveal new concern for the internal and external factors that can compromise performance. This broader risk calculus considers uncontrollable disasters, along with factors that are linked to companies' strategic and operating decisions. Although the finance function is often in the best position to provide the "analytic engine" for enterprise-wide risk initiatives, executives say that risk management is emerging as an organization-wide discipline and endorse close collaboration between finance and business-unit management to evaluate and measure non-financial risk.

Category: Performance Management/Risk Management and Compliance
- Sponsored by IBM

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Pension Plan Risk: Using the calm before the next storm

March 2007: This report examines finance executives’ views on the risks posed by their companies’ defined benefit pension plans. Through a survey and an interview program, this study explores executives’ views on the risks to business performance posed by defined benefit plans and the steps they are taking to understand, quantify, and ultimately manage these risks. This research program suggests many companies are thinking more about how to sustain their pension plans than about how to shut them down. The pension scare at the beginning of this decade has given corporate CFOs cause to rethink how to analyze their risk related to pension plans and how they plan to manage it in the future.

Category: Performance Management/Risk Management and Compliance
- Sponsored by Towers Perrin

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The Superstar CFO—Optimizing An Increasingly Complex Role
March 2007:
What does the ideal CFO do? What does he or she not do? And what should the ideal CFO do in the future? In this study, more than 350 senior finance executives weigh in with their views on the superstar CFO. Survey respondents say that the ideal CFO bears ultimate responsibility for the finance function and its results, and that he or she should work closely with other parts of the business as an adviser and process expert. But while they report strong performance among today’s CFOs in their role as leaders of the finance function, respondents call for CFOs to spend more time and attention on performance enhancing activities—such as developing business strategy—in the future.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by SAP

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Focus Spending, Increase Productivity: Finance manages cost while enabling productivity at mid-size companies
March 2007: In this continued research collaboration with American Express on indirect expense management at mid-size U.S. companies, CFO Research Services explores senior finance executives’ spending and cost management priorities, and the roles that preferred vendors, automation, and purchasing methods such as credit cards play in helping finance executives empower their employees and govern their expense management programs. Our survey of 332 senior finance executives shows that CFOs and their teams are turning their attention to managing costs and to other performance-related activities. Queried on their priorities for improvement in the year ahead, finance executives’ top choices are all aligned with closely managing business performance—managing costs, supporting business decision making, and preparing plans, budgets, and forecasts. IT.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by American Express

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Finance Chiefs Reveal the Downside of Their Expanded Role
March 2007: This study examines finance executives’ views on their scope of responsibilities, how the corporate finance profession has changed in recent years, and their professional and personal satisfaction with their roles. How do higher expectations affect finance executives and the human capital strategy for their teams? As more and more finance executives add “manage personnel amid high turnover” to their lengthy management to-do lists, what steps can they take to ensure their companies, colleagues, and they themselves have the right resources and rewards? We sought to answer these and other questions in this study of U.S. companies—large and small, public and private, across a broad range of industries.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by Tatum

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Promoting Growth Through Incentive Compensation Management:
Technology Tools Increase Visibility And Control

March 2007: Companies increasingly sell integrated product and service offerings to their customers in an effort to make the most of each opportunity. Such integrated offerings bring complexity to companies' processes for selling and serving these accounts — and to the compensation plans used to motivate and reward staff. Some companies have adopted incentive compensation management software to administer complex compensation plans, manage the cost of such plans, and predict results with certainty. In this study, CFO Research Services reports on a series of in-depth interviews with senior finance executives who explain how their companies have met their incentive compensation management challenges.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by Varicent

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Discipline And Balance Drive Success: Investment In Information Gathering And Technology Transforms Finance
February 2007: I n the past several years, many companies have invested heavily in technology systems for storing, analyzing, and reporting performance data—and the results of this study among 184 senior finance executives show that many of these investments have paid off handsomely. Yet there are significant gaps in companies' performance management capabilities—gaps in companies' ability to assess the external economic and market context in which they operate; gaps in their ability to understand their own operating information; gaps in their ability to understand the risks that threaten them; and gaps in their ability to respond meaningfully to changing business conditions. In this research program, we gained significant insight into the ways companies have filled these gaps through a combination of rigorous information gathering, structured risk review, and aggressive investment in IT.

Category: Finance & Technology
- Sponsored by Cognos

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Salary Guide For Accounting And Financial Professionals (2007)
2007: This report, prepared by Ajilon Finance based on data gathered by CFO Research Services, discusses salary data and employment trends for 2007. The Salary Guide provides salary ranges, by region, for the most common accounting and finance jobs, plus insights into CFOs' top priorities, their views on compensation and employment opportunities in finance, and their forecasts for hiring in the coming year.

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by Ajilon Finance

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Rolling Forecasts Begin to Emerge as a New Standard—Finance Executives Seek a More Accurate, Timely View of the Future
November 2006: The forward-looking view of business conditions—internally and externally—is a paramount concern for both finance executives and managers at large. Finance executives say that while their forecasting capabilities generally meet their business needs, they aspire to create more accurate, timelier forecasts of business conditions. By doing so, say executives, they will improve both business performance and risk management capabilities. In this collaboration with Cartesis, CFO Research Services explores current practices in business forecasting among U.S. and European companies.

Category: Outsourcing, Cost Control, and Other Practices
- Sponsored by Cartesis

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What Do Companies Want From The Corporate Tax Function? - Cfo And Tax Executives' Perspectives On Corporate Tax
November 2006: Changing accounting standards and increased regulatory scrutiny will require new capabilities among tax teams, say the tax and finance executives surveyed for this report. In this study of more than 150 executives, respondents call for the tax department to play a greater role in business activities outside the core tax function. Tax executives, in particular, are eager for tax to make a more substantial contribution to business decision making. Most respondents say that leadership and managerial skills among senior tax executives will be increasingly important to their success. The research indicates that tax departments are recasting their business processes, building stronger leadership teams, and investing in new technology for tax.  

Category: Strategies for the Finance Function
- Sponsored by Deloitte Tax LLP

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