At a recent briefing IBM raised the idea that in any number of ways the Internet, Web—online computing—badly needs refreshing. Just look at what you are doing with online. Does it seem stale?

Consider this: the online experience now encompasses mobile, cloud, big data, social networking, and gamification. You probably didn’t deal with any of that when you initially got online. Then consider the devices connecting today, 15 billion mobile devices alone expected by 2015, estimates Cisco, plus the usual array of laptops, netbooks, desktops, thin devices. And who is connecting: Hispanics spent 5.15 billion through mobile devices this past holiday shopping season, according to Zpryme, a research firm. Did you get much of that?

Here are two more reasons the CFO might consider: online retailers may have lost $44.6B in 2010 due to online customer experience problems (Harris Interactive) or another—disengaged workers cost U.S. businesses as much as $350 billion a year (Gallup Research). It makes sense at least to revitalize the online experience for customers, workers, and partners. more

The last mile of finance is an idea that has been popularized by Gartner. It addresses the business processes at the end of the financial close. This includes helping the CFO communicate with publishers, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and board members on financial and operational results. Included are reconciliation, close, and disclosure applications.

Deloitte, too, picked up on the idea noting that companies face many challenges with the financial close and reporting process. For Deloitte the last mile covers the processes and activities in between the trial balance and a company’s 10K. In this last mile organizations can experience management reporting and governance issues—including financial and internal control failures—resulting not only in significant inefficiencies but also financial errors and internal control failures.

The solution, according to Deloitte, calls for a holistic approach, which entails developing a road map for improvement to address the process, the policy, the people, and the technology issues, and how they successfully work together to improve the efficiency, governance, and quality of your financial reporting and close. Technology plays a key role. more

At the 2011 conference of The Association for Operations Management (APICS) where I was a presenter I attended a provocative talk by Alan G. Dunn, President and founder of GDI Consulting and Training Company. He questioned if leaders are born or can be grown. It is the classic “nature versus nurture” debate. It got me to thinking about whether business analysts within an organization can be more than a support to others. Can they be leaders? I share some of Alan’s thoughts.

What distinguishes strong from weak leaders?

Having all the knowledge means nothing without the right types of people. One person can make a big difference. They can be someone who somehow gets it altogether and changes the fabric of an organization’s culture not through mandating change but by engaging and motivating others.

For some leaders irritating people is not only a sport but it is their personal entertainment. They are rarely successful. Dunn referenced studies that conclude that the three primary success factor for effective leaders is technical competence, critical thinking skills, and communication skills. more

Desktop virtualization, referred to as Virtual Desktop Interface (VDI), has long held great promise, and for specialized situations it has delivered big. wiredFINANCE last looked at VDI almost two years ago here. At that time the payback was elusive.

The benefit of desktop virtualization is the ability to more efficiently deliver desktop computing to individual workers faster and with many fewer people involved. In effect, it eliminates the overhead of delivering desktop computing desktop by desktop.

IDC has become bullish on VDI in the last year. You can see what it says here. A new approach to VDI, however, can do even better. more

Just because an organization moves applications to the cloud doesn’t mean the IT staff is relieved from the task of IT service management (ITSM). Yet, that is exactly how many managers act. They assume the cloud provider takes over responsibility for managing the infrastructure (servers, storage, network) and they are off the hook.

Not so fast. “Once an organization adopts cloud computing it quickly becomes apparent that the traditional approach to ITSM needs to be reviewed,” writes Malcolm Fry, in a white paper titled 5 Questions About ITSM and Cloud Computing, published by CA Technologies. Furthermore, “failure to change traditional IT approaches when adopting a cloud service will greatly increase the chances of failure,” he warns.

A recent ITP Report, reinforced that point: organizations will require continual monitoring of cloud computing. This will be essential to avoid costly mistakes, according to Gartner. Here are five tools Logicalis, an international IT managed services provider suggests can help management. more