Tomato Newsletter "News 'n Views" No. 143 – November 2011

Introduction:

This newsletter features mainly news, views and observations from the press while our website includes mostly static information about Tomato and our services. The homepage also offers the blog - where you find up-to-date info on events, activities and positions we take on latest developments - podcasts, and links to previous newsletters. Explore these various channels to stay up-to-date on our microcosm within the Finance and IT world.

Enjoy!

Regula Spottl and the Tomato Team

p.s. Wir würden uns freuen, wenn Sie uns am Tomato-Apéro am Freitag, 2. Dezember 2011 ab 16 Uhr in Kloten besuchen würden!


In Today's Issue:

TOMATO UPDATES

FINANCE AND BANKING

IT

MISCELLANEOUS

 

Tomato an Messen in Karlsruhe, 8.+ 9. Nov 2011

Von Martin Schneider

Am 8.11. stellten Andreas Carl und ich Tomato am Bellin Customer Meeting in Karlsruhe vor; und am 9.11. nahm ich an der Messe „Structured Finance“ im Kongresszentrum in Karlsruhe teil.

Tomato geht selten an Messen, da wir uns wegen den hearusragenden Lösungen für unsere Kunden fast ausschliesslich auf Mund-zu-Mund Werbung verlassen können. Nichts ohne Ausnahme: Um unser erfolgreiches und abgeschlossenes Projekt Dezentrale Payment Factory bekannter zu machen, nahmen wir in Karlsruhe am Customer Meeting von Bellin teil.

Solche Anlässe geben uns eine Gesamtübersicht zu unserer Branche und die Chance, Trends und Anliegen von Leuten zu erfahren, mit denen wir sonst kaum in Kontakt kommen. Wir nutzen das, uns danach im micro-Umfeld damit zu befassen.

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How Swift Serves Corporates (2 minute video)

“Watch” is a Business Analytics tool for reporting and analyzing SWIFT messaging activity. It allows for identifying trends, spotting exceptions, and benchmarking your company against others in the industry. (Video...)

It’s a good marketing video that resonates with SWIFT’s vision and plans, which we fully support. Our job at Tomato is to translate these visions into results for you in a cost-saving manner. The integration of SWIFT into your ERP, workflows and know-how significantly adds to your central and local treasury team’s quality of work as well as their work life.

To learn from our direct experience, watch our video cast “How to access your Bank-Accounts in Germany, Switzerland or EU," where Martin und Sven discuss how to implement SWIFT Score in your company.

Also check „Swift-Studie zu Banken und Liquiditätsrisiken“ and „Survey: Data management issues delay liquidity risk progress: A new white paper issued by SWIFT” which we featured in our September newsletter.

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Hochschule Luzern 21.11. Internationaler Business Process Workshop & Anwendertag: “Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)”

Montag, 21.11.2011 - Dienstag, 22.11.2011

Hochschule Luzern - Technik & Architektur, 6048 Horw

The program will feature three main events:

  • Anwendertag/Practitioner Day (in German and English) featuring experience reports of applying BPMN in the industries and public services.
  • Ausstellung/Exhibition (in German and English) showing commercial products and innovative tools around BPMN and business process management.
  • Scientific Workshop (in English only) discussing challenges and latest research results around the BPMN standard

(Programm & Anmeldung...)

Zielgruppen: Experten, Entscheider und Anwender, die sich mit dem Thema Geschäftsprozessmanagement beschäftigen und an aktuellen Informationen zu den neuesten Trends und Technologien, insbesondere zum BPM Standard, interessiert sind.

(Details zum Anwendertag in deutsch...)

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Podcast Summarizes Oct 2011 SEPA News

The European Payments Council offers a 5-minute video/audio with comments on the latest developments in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) from the October 2011 edition of the EPC Newsletter.

(Online October issue of the EPC Newsletter...)

Also available on their website:

  • EPC Webcast: EPC Webinar (October 2011)
  • Video: An Introduction to SEPA

Ideal when you’re temporarily burnt out from meetings and dealing with problems! Switch off yet learn something at the same time!

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How to Excel in Cash Flow Forecasting

The GTNews article What are the Required Factors to Reach Excellence in Cash Flow Forecasting? reviews various system- and business-related factors that positively affect cooperation in the cash flow forecasting process.

Our colleagues Stefan Völkel and Gilbert Lüthi, Eprox Consulting first describe the evolution of Cash Flow Forecasting. They then list four factors that need to be mastered in the quest to attain excellence in cash flow forecasting. These factors are:

  1. Multidisciplinarity
  2. Flexibility
  3. Intensified forms of cooperation between the head office and the planning staff.
  4. Adequate financial incentive schemes.

The article describes these factors in details and is supplemented with excellent graphs.

(Full story... registration required, free)

Eine Kurzversion des Artikels in deutsch auf der website von Exprox Consulting. nbsp]

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Liquidity Risk Management: Changes and Trends

In their Oct. 11 newsletter, GTNews’ editorial focus involved articles on liquidity risk management. Two of them resonated with us. (GTNews articles require registration which is free)

In Taking Liquidity Risk Management to the Next Level, Jason Torgler of Reval explains how establishing structures that improve visibility and decision-making will help to improve tracking and managing liquidity risk. (Full story...)

In “Liquidity Risk Management and the Changing Risk Landscape,” Stuart Owers and Dev Sharma of Aerice list the considerations that go into devising an effective risk framework. They support their explanations with a graph “An Effective Risk Framework” that includes all necessary considerations. (Full story...)

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Global State of Information Security Survey

The 2012 Global State of Information Security Survey, conducted by PWC, CIO Magazine and CSO Magazine, revealed that the majority of executives across industries and markets worldwide are confident in the effectiveness of their organization’s information security practices.

The survey was conducted online between February and April 2011. 9,600 CEOs, CFOs, CIOs etc from 138 countries participated in the survey.

Some key findings:

  • Almost 50% of respondents are confident that their security activities are effective
  • Security capabilities have been degrading since 2008.
  • Key areas of improvement include C-suite buy in and increased funding
  • Asia races ahead while the world’s information security arsenals age

(Details...)

(Download the complete report or reports for specific industry segments in English...)

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Business Practices CIOs Should Abandon

At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Ken McGee, research analyst at Gartner suggested 16 long-held “IT business practices that need to be killed.” Not that all are practiced by all CIOs, but they point in the right direction, said McGee.

See which actions you should perhaps take:

  • Stop recommending mega projects
  • Eliminate differences between CIO/CEO projects
  • Terminate projects that do not improve the income statement
  • Abandon CIO priorities that don't support CEO priorities
  • Terminate existing apps that do not yield measurable business value
  • End the practice of putting the enterprise IT spending within the CIO budget
  • Abolish environment of little or no IT spending accountability
  • Eliminate IT caused business model disruption surprises
  • Kill cloud-a-phobia
  • Abandon level 1,2,3 tech support
  • Stop holding onto unfunded projects. Stop IT hoarders
  • End unbalanced support between back and front office

(Full story...)

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Top Ten Strategic IT Trends for 2012

Also at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Gartner Vice President David Cearley offered the following topics to explain how the tech world is changing and the implications of these changes. IT leaders need to start preparing for changes now, Clearley says.

The key topics involve:

  • Media tablets and beyond
  • Mobile-centric applications and interfaces
  • Social and contextual user experience
  • Application stores and marketplace
  • The Internet of everything
  • Next-generation analytics
  • Big data
  • In-memory computing
  • Extreme low-energy servers
  • Cloud computing

The CIO article “Gartner: the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2012” by Michael Cooney has been tweeted over 400 times, which illustrates its relevance. (Full story...)

 

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Custom Searches, not Folders, Found Best for Handling Email

What started as a comprehensive, formal study by IBM research has snowballed into a series of articles in various newsletters and blogs of business magazines and countless reader comments in the social media.

The study “Am I wasting my time organizing email? A study of email refinding” reviewed working styles and effectiveness of office workers who file their emails in folders versus those who use search.

The study found that “users who just searched their inbox found emails slightly faster than users who had filed them by folders.”

Well, I’m all for folders and Martin uses both, folders and searches. What’s your style? (Download the full report...)

(Review of Study in Boxfreeit.com...)

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World Bank’s 2012 Doing Business-Rankings

Gemäss dem „Doing Business“ Report der Weltbank sind Singapur, Hong Kong und Neuseeland die Spitzenreiter. Die Schweiz rangiert auf Platz 26.

Im Artikel von OSEC finden Sie eine gute Zusammenfassung und die ersten drei in allen Themenbereichen. 

Download the Report Doing Business in a More Transparent World!

Regula’s Comment:

Reading the rankings, I understand for the first time why so many companies move part of their business to Asia. To reverse the trend, many Western nations need to reevaluate their system and implement incentives for organizations to retain production and other functions at home.

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From the Desk of Regula Spottl, Greensboro, North Carolina

Lessons to Learn from Enron

I’m currently taking yet another class on Business Ethics. It’s one of my favorite business topics. In this type of class, the Enron case lends itself perfectly for discussions. Here’s in a nutshell what managers can learn from the case:

  • It is important to know that there are bad apples in any company. The key is to be able identify the characteristics of bad apples.
  • Also important: Be aware of the organizational culture. Are there checks on bad behaviors or are they largely ignored, tolerated or even encouraged?
  • Examining the system is also important. Are there systems in place to prevent the possibility of bad apples from having free reign?

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