Online Registration Now Open for IMA's 92nd Annual Conference & Exposition: Orlando, Fla., June 4-8, 2011
IMA
Leave your desktop behind and build true professional connections during three days of continuing education and networking. At IMA's 92nd Annual Conference and Exposition, to be held June 4-8, in Orlando, Fla., the association will showcase exciting and informative sessions delivered by some of the most renowned thought leaders in accounting and finance. Visit www.imaconference.org for details.More

CMA Profile: Edward Imparato
IMA
As the 2010 winner of the prestigious NJBIZ CFO of the Year Award, Edward Imparato can look back proudly on the path that led him to the pinnacle of his career thus far. Currently, Mr. Imparato serves as senior vice president finance and CFO of United Water, Inc., one of the nation's leading environmental companies. Mr. Imparato made a wise decision about 15 years ago, he became a CMA®.More

More US Small Businesses Planned to Add Jobs in December
Bloomberg
More small businesses in the U.S. said they were having trouble filling job openings in December, while plans to add to payrolls rose to a 27-month high, a private survey found. The National Federation of Independent Business said 13 percent of small-business owners reported open positions that were hard to fill, an increase of four percentage points from November and a two-year high. A net 6 percent, up two points, last month said they planned to add workers.More

Small Business Owners Can Avoid Tax Season Panic
The Associated Press via ABC News
Here are some comforting words for small business owners: It's not inevitable that you'll have a tax season panic attack. Planning now will make the process of completing and filing your tax return less of an ordeal. If you're the kind who's always rushing at the end to get your tax forms filled out, the first thing you need to do is figure out, right now, what the problems are. And figure out how to fix them, even if it means hiring someone to organize your receipts and/or hiring an accountant to complete your return.More

How Not to Create Private-Company GAAP
CFO
Dissatisfaction with generally accepted accounting principles is increasing among stakeholders of private U.S. companies. A blue-ribbon panel has tentatively concluded that a new standard-setting body should create a distinct GAAP for private U.S. companies by specifying extensive exceptions to GAAP as set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Unfortunately, due to the panel's lack of risk awareness, establishing a "little GAAP" for general-purpose financial reporting is unlikely to solve the problems of key stakeholders. Beyond that, stakeholders are likely to reject the panel's solution regardless of how suitable it is for their problems.More

Managing Performance in the Right Direction
Bangkok Post
We have been proponents of performance measurement for many years. Indeed, in the early 1990s, we even had the temerity to try to buck the tide of the Balanced Scorecard phenomenon and suggest that we had an even better approach. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, who developed the Balanced Scorecard, obviously prevailed. Our key point, though, has always been that everyone is entitled to know how they are doing. We all deserve to get objective, fact-based feedback regarding whether or not we are doing our jobs well. If there is opportunity for improvement, the underlying measures and performance drivers should guide the decision. But what defines good performance?More

Business Execution - An Integration of Hoshin Planning, Lean Six Sigma and Balanced Scorecards
Six Sigma & Process Excellence
Business Execution is already causing senior leaders of global organizations to rethink not only the way in which they are driving execution, but how they implement and measure their organizational practice and performance. This new approach to strategy execution allows CEO's for the first time to link together how goals are defined, how projects are driven forward and how performance is measured in a closed-loop process. Put simply, Business Execution software brings together and tightly integrates the three core execution capabilities of goal management, program management and performance management, which, in turn, enable organizations to define the plan, execute the plan and measure the resulting impact. More

6 Strategies for IT Cost Allocation
Spend Matters
Increasingly, IT managers need to communicate the value of IT and reduce costs while maintaining quality. As a result, they need more visibility into the full costs of IT services to understand the cost burden placed on IT by specific business units. There are many methods for determining this "cost allocation" - the trick is finding the best approach to provide the most accurate data.More