Long-Range Planning: The Good, the Bad (Some Ugly) and the Way Forward

The numbers from a new long-range planning study support quantitatively what we've known intuitively all along: The better your data, communications, processes and systems, the more your long-range planning will help you determine the best strategy for succeeding in your market and secure the best assets to support your strategic objectives. This is the good news from the 2013 Long-Range Planning Benchmark Study, which was conducted by Ventana Research and sponsored by Planview and Fi...

Tim Cook's Pitch For a Corporate Tax Holiday Suits Washington Just Fine

One of the strangely charming aspects of the CEO class in America (and one they share with most of Congress) is their ability to tune out the actually pressing issues of the day – the weakening American labor force, the troublesome cycle of consumer debt, the flagging pace of economic growth – and, instead, focus with laser precision on hyping the kind of issues that the rest of us might call first-world problems.

So it's no surprise that government and corporation...

In Which Downtown Josh Brown Destroys The 1999 Comparison

I'll be brief here because I don't have a lot of time for nonsense. I have a few major projects in the works and actual portfolios to manage for people, not theoretical or virtual ones.

Okay - so the 1999 comparisons have begun to surface. They're saying that the market feels or looks like 1999, mainly because stocks are up in an uninterrupted spree and people are starting to feel good about their investments. Today I even participated in a television segment about this premis...

5 Emerging Trends in Developing Finance Talent

With the great recession still looming large in the rear-view mirror, companies are pivoting from the human capital priorities shaped largely by the recession and its aftermath of weak economic growth, and turning their focus to the 2020 horizon. The world’s leading organizations recognize that, while uncertainty remains a part of the business landscape, now is the time to decidedly shift toward the growth opportunities that will position companies for success in the future. In ...

BP and Shell Raided in European Commission Price-Rigging Inquiry

The London offices of BP and Shell have been raided by European regulators investigating allegations they have "colluded" to rig oil prices for more than a decade.

The European commission said its officers carried out "unannounced inspections" at several oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway to investigate claims they may have "colluded in reporting distorted prices to a price reporting agency [PRA] to manipulate the published prices for a number of oil and biofu...

The Value of Outsourcing Procurement

Controlling expenses and improving margins are imperatives for every chief financial officer. CFOs at large companies have a hand on the traditional levers – rightsizing the workforce and shifting production and back-office work to lower cost locations. But most companies have already maximized the potential of these options.

Many organizations have achieved further savings by focusing on indirect spend, which can account for 8-15% of total revenue and span more than 100...