Maria Korolov » Archive
The Great Risk Race
As Asia’s dynamic markets demand risk management attention and expertise, financial firms rush to fill a talent gap, with particular urgency in China. Three years ago, when Yang Haitao, an experienced financial risk manager, moved to Shanghai to join Nanyang Commercial Bank (China), he knew it was going to be more than a routine job change. As senior risk manager for the subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Nanyang, Yang was to take … Read more »
Sorting Out Sales
Changes to revenue recognition rules may be beneficial but will lead to accounting headaches that new software can relieve. Last September, regulators issued new revenue recognition rules that allow companies to book product and service sales separately—a boost for the balance sheet, but a big accounting hassle. Prior to the new rules, effective 1Q of fiscal 2011, if a company sold a product bundled with a service contract, the revenue was allocated … Read more »
Taming Spreadsheets
New software products aim to help companies get the whip hand over ubiquitous but risky spreadsheets. Concur Technologies helps companies automate the processes by which they manage employee travel and entertainment spending, but some of its own processes aren’t fully automated. “We’re like everyone,” says Terry DePolo, Concur’s director of accounting. “We’re trying to minimize the number of spreadsheets we rely on. We’re currently on the Oracle 11i system, and it’s … Read more »
OppenheimerFunds gets return on investment from Agile, SOA
OppenheimerFunds used to have a data entry efficiency problem. Address changes that customers made on its Web site had to be manually re-entered into a variety of back-end systems before they went into effect. “Our business was growing — that was the good news,” said Geoff Youell, the firm’s assistant vice president of architecture. But due to the integration issues, the record keeping side wasn’t scaling very well. “There was a lot of retyping the same information multiple times into legacy systems,” he said. Read full article at Network World. (Reprinted from CIO.) … Read more »
Visa issues 10 ‘commandments’ for online merchants
In an attempt to reduce online credit-card fraud, Visa U.S.A. in San Francisco announced 10 “commandments” for online merchants to guard its cardholders’ information. And, next week, Visa will follow up by releasing the details of a broad online security program. John Shaughnessy, Visa’s senior vice president for risk management, said merchants would be required to obey these rules or face fines, sales restrictions or loss of membership. Read full article at Network World. (Reprinted from Computerworld.) … Read more »