Administration April 10, 2002

Net Impact On Treasury Functions – Survey

October 16, 2001(PLANSPONSOR.com) - The Internet is expected to have a significant affect on corporations' overall treasury functions, a new survey finds.
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Results of the survey, conducted by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) and Ernst & Young LLP, show that:

  • three-quarters of practitioners believe that the Internet’s biggest impact will be on fostering workflow efficiencies,
  • over 80% believe that the Internet will have a major impact on payments, collections and investments,
  • over a third consider the Internet to be very important in realizing their company’s goals for centralizing treasury, and
  • a further 68% expect the Internet’s role will be extremely important by the year 2003

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Treasury departments are also becoming more involved in negotiating Internet alliances and making Internet outsourcing decisions, according to the survey.

In fact,

  • almost half the respondents said treasury had some involvement in setting their organization’s e-commerce strategy,
  • while 38% agreed that treasury was taking on a leadership role in their company’s Internet planning

The study also suggests that the Internet is driving activities forward:

  • almost a quarter of respondents thought that e-commerce activities were actually a higher priority now, relative to last year, and
  • over a third felt internally focused Web activities were a higher priority now

Methodology 

The survey was sponsored by and sponsored by JPMorgan Treasury Services and conducted in June 2001. It comprised the responses of 977 AFP practitioner members, including corporate treasurers, controllers, CFOs, presidents, assistant treasurers and cash managers.

Benefits April 9, 2002

Knowing Workers' Change Styles

April 9, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - When it comes to thriving in a marketplace that seems to recreate itself all the time, top executives can rest assured that most managers welcome workplace change.
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That was one result of a survey by Discovery Learning, a training products developer, of manager behaviors in the workplace.

Discovery Learning classified respondents along a three-part continuum:

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  • originators who welcome dramatic change
  • conservers who are comfortable with gradual change
  • pragmatists who most heavily support changes that solve current problems


More than half of the managers surveyed scored in the pragmatist range, 26% were in the originator range and 22% were classified as conservers.
 
Results also show that:

  • men are much more likely than women to be originators, by a 5% margin,
  • women are much more likely to be conservers than men, 27% compared to 17%,
  • the communications industry had the heaviest percentage of pragmatists at 71% and the fewest conservers at 11%,
  • the petroleum industry shows the fewest number of originators, and
  • the real change agents, or originators, among the professions were soldiers at 46%, school principals at 42%, and business consultants at 40%.


Furthermore, Baby Boomers were the age group that had the most change agents, with 33% of originators while Gen Xers had 26% originators. A little over a quarter of those born during the depression and after World War II were originators

Generally, researchers said, managers would do well to understand the different ways people react to change. For example, they said, a worker who fights change may actually be strongly devoted to the company.

The survey covered more than 5,000 mid-to-upper level managers nationally, contacted between 1996 and 2001.


 

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