January 25, 2012
MSNBC.com, "Obama's insourcing jobs plan faces an uphill battle,"

President Obama decried the outsourcing of jobs to foreign lands in the State of the Union last night while Steve Jobs' widow looked on. Clearly, the administration wanted Apple represented as an example of American ingenuity and success. Hackett Chief Research Officer Michel Janssen offers his insights in this piece.

January 18, 2012
CFO, "Imagine There's No Excel,"

With the rise of analytics and Big Data, replacements for Excel are proliferating and CFOs of companies large and small are beginning to pay attention. Sanjay Sehgal, global enterprise performance management practice leader at The Hackett Group, is quoted.

January 13, 2012
CFO.com, "The Check's in the Mail - for Two More Days,"

The U.S. Postal Service decision to end next-day delivery could add tie up millions of dollars in working capital, according to new research from REL Consulting, a division of The Hackett Group.

January 9, 2012
Inc., "Post Office Delays: How to Avoid a Cash Flow Crunch,"

You may have heard that the U.S. Postal Service had decided to scale back operations and eliminate next-day first-class mail delivery. Then there are continued closings of smaller post offices. According to REL Consulting, a division of The Hackett Group, the elimination of next-day first-class delivery alone will slow customer collections enough to cost a typical large U.S. company up to $100 million a year. The impact on a small company won't be anywhere near as large, but it could still hurt. And if there's post office near a client, sending invoices or receiving payments could become even more difficult. If you rely on traditional mail for your business, here are some steps you can take to help avoid an impact to your cash flow.

January 4, 2012
CIO Talk Radio Webcast, "Benchmarks And Metrics for Fluid Business and IT,"

In order to stay focused, we have always applied benchmarks and metrics to establish a baseline and measure progress against predefined goals. Are the same benchmarks and metrics still relevant? Is everything that we want to measure, measurable? Given the fast pace and fluidity of business and IT, will measurement get easier or more difficult moving forward? What challenges and opportunities lay ahead to establish effective benchmarks for predictable growth and profitability? (Webcast with: Michel Janssen, Chief Research Officer at The Hackett Group; George Westerman, Research Scientist in the Center for Information Systems Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management; and Chris Smith, CIO for the US Department of Agriculture.)