Software-oriented architecture (SOA), which promises to make different, otherwise incompatible systems interoperate, is continuing to gain popularity. Using a SOA-based approach, for example, finance systems can interoperate with ERP, sales, and engineering systems, merrily exchanging data and calling functionality from one or another as needed. While critics complain that SOA imposes a steep learning curve, making it difficult and costly to implement, case studies show that it improves the speed at which you can integrate applications and the ability to change systems easily when the business changes.

Do you know where your cash is? In a recent survey by APQC, nine out of 10 CFOs said that they are scrambling to figure out where the cash is and how to keep a firm grip on it, and a majority are taking steps to generate cash internally. APQC identifies moves CFOs should make to manage the issue, however, to do any of these, CFOs need one more thing: visibility into the organization's various cash-generating and cash-consuming activities. That calls for corporate performance management (CPM), business intelligence (BI), and business performance management (BPM) tools.

CFOs have long complained about the cost of litigation -- even if you win the case, the litigation costs can blow the balance sheet. Deidre Paknad, CEO, PSS Systems recommends three steps to reduce litigation costs: reduce the amount of data potentially involved using tools to enforce data retention policies, reduce the scope of the data involved using discovery cost estimating tools, and make realistic estimates of the cost of litigation using effective litigation cost estimating tools.

Finance organizations that have incorporated green IT practices into their operations achieve more than a pat on the back for saving the world. They stand to save significant money through lower energy bills and ensure that they continue in business when economic growth (eventually) returns.

The ideas and technology of social networking sites like Facebook have made their way into social software, a new type of software that facilitates collaborative work by encouraging participants to create and share content. For the finance group, there is at least one process that can benefit from social software -- budgeting, since the budget process typically entails numerous meetings and numerous messages passing among many people.

Stakeholders, regulators, and executives in the financial services industry need more reliable risk information. To produce this, the key adaptation financial services companies (as well as other companies with insufficient GRC capabilities) will have to make is in their management of highly fluid processes -- the extent to which organizations can "lock down" these processes with effective controls, and then convey that to regulators and stakeholders.

When trying to cut IT costs, companies often consider offshore outsourcing — outsourcing to a vendor in a cheap labor locale like India, China, or Belarus. However, despite being able to pay workers lower wages, the overall cost of IT may not drop.

Virtualization, which Gartner has identified as the highest impact trend in the infrastructure and operations market through 2012, brings flexibility and reliability to the IT operation as well as cost savings.

The Cloud, technology content and services that are bought on a unit-consumed basis, either per-seat, in the case of e-mail accounts, or per gigabyte, in the case of storage, has the potential to create a discontinuity in how companies consume and pay for services. Every company should be thinking about it today.

Almost everything a company decides to do has an IT component to it, yet when the CEO calls the team together for big decisions, the CIO is often excluded. Why? The answer in most companies is that the CIO is not considered part of the senior team and is not valued as a member of the inner circle. Here are ways to improve the relationship.

Automating GRC can reduce the cost of compliance, but there are two major problems: the size and complexity of the automation challenge and the inability of the GRC discipline to conform to the needs of machine intelligence.

Global investors are demanding stricter corporate governance and compliance requirements for publicly held companies. Read this Oracle white paper in the BPM Resource Center to learn more about the issues, new principles, and technologies underlying these new requirements.

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