Question

1. What types of managerial reporting are most important to the CFO and other financial leadership?

2. We've discussed controls within and surrounding an AIS/ERP, as well as auditing those controls embedded in the IT components. What types of information systems controls would you highlight as most important? What basis would you point to for support of your responses?

3. We've discussed the systems development process, and highlighted several ERP implementations case studies that went wrong. What would you identify as a common theme amongst these failed implementation cases? How does the topics of organization change factor in as well?

4. Which of the various emerging technologies / disruptive business models do you believe will have the greatest impact? Why do you say this?

Answer 1

Q1. A chief financial officer (CFO) is the senior executive responsible for managing the financial actions of a company. The CFO's duties include tracking cash flow and financial planning as well as analyzing the company's financial strengths and weaknesses and proposing corrective actions.

  The CFO is similar to a treasurer or controller because they are responsible for managing the finance and accounting divisions and for ensuring that the company’s financial reports are accurate and completed in a timely manner.

other financial leadership are:

Planner
The importance of the CFO's role in financial planning cannot be overemphasized. A solid financial plan, authored by the CEO and CFO, provides the backbone for any organization, linking the organization's strategic mission and vision to measurable financial goals. A well-developed financial plan helps the organization determine the critical relationship between strategy and financial capability and achieve operating results that ensure financial equilibrium.

Allocator of capital
The CEO is responsible for establishing a "vision" for strategic capital investment that sets forth what the organization wishes to accomplish given its mission, but the actual process of allocating that capital should be the province of the CFO. The most important financial decision made each year by the senior management team and ratified by the board is how much capital to spend and on which initiatives the dollars will be spent.

Capital structure and debt management
Expense management will always be important, but for the CFO, expense management should start with interest-rate management, debt management, and the overall management of sophisticated capital structures. Over time, capital-structure and cost-of-capital decisions can affect a balance sheet by millions of dollars. "Plain vanilla" finance--such as when an A-rating organization borrows money at a fixed interest rate for 30 years and then forgets about it--is a thing of the past. Today's transactions require daily attention to interest costs, manipulating the capital structure when opportunities emerge to lower all-in capital costs.

Accounting officer
Finance in the world following Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco means that the CFO is first and foremost the chief accounting officer. Financial leaders must act on the fact that organizational credibility depends on the accuracy of financial statements. Although major audit firms have tightened standards, significant accounting decision points remain for the CFO, including recognition of loss on investments, pension accounting, accounting for acquisitions and divestitures, and accounting for derivative transactions.

Credit officer

CFOs must be the guardian of their institution's credit quality, because an organization's long-term competitive position today substantially depends on its ability to raise affordable capital in the debt markets. This, in turn, is highly dependent on the organization's credit rating and overall creditworthiness. It is often up to the CFO to resist the short-term temptations to sacrifice strong balance sheets and A-category bond ratings for incremental debt capacity and additional strategic investment.

Q2. An Accounting Information System (AIS) is the system of records a businesskeeps to maintain its accounting system. This includes the purchase , sales , andother financial proceses of the business. The purpose of an AIS is to accumulatedata and provide decision makers ( investors , creditors , and managers ) withinformation to make decisions. Inputs processes outputs Transaction data Financial statement Accounting Invoices Amendments to System Receipts Management information data

TYPES OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Transaction processing systems

Management information system

and decision support systems Executive support system for senior management

Transaction processing system is a type of information system. TPSs collect, store, modify and retrieve the transactions of anorganization, A Transaction is an event that generates ormodifies data that is eventually stored an information system.E.g : Order entry system, cheque processing systems,accounts receivables systems, payroll systems and ticketreservation systemsThese systems help any company to conduct operations andkeep track of its activities

Q3. A common theme amongst these failed implementation cases:

• Not doing careful requirements gathering

• Not including end-users (from all departments) in the decision-making process

• Not properly budgeting for technology staff

• Not weighing the pros and cons of on-premises vs. cloud-based ERP

• Not including an industry-specific solution in the decision-making process (if relevant)

• Being dazzled by features

• Implementing the system at once (or trying to)

• Ignoring change management

• Not investing in/supporting the implementation team

• Not regularly communicating information (especially across departments)

• Not having a maintenance plan

Q4.

Disruptive technologies are innovations that help create new markets and eventually go on to disrupt an existing market and value networks, displacing an earlier technology. This term, coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen, is often used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect.

For example, the automobile was a revolutionary technological innovation, but it was not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower priced Ford Model T in 1908. The mass-production of automobiles was a disruptive innovation because it changed the transportation market.