As companies start to look at their next round of cost-cutting and efficiency measures, with much of the low-hanging fruit already harvested, next-generation business intelligence and data analytics technology-integrated with a raft of other technology solutions--will provide the backbone to dig more deeply into processes and send and receive information in near-real-time for swift decision-making.

As the crisis progressed, many companies turned to internal cost cutting measures to reduce working capital expenditures and save cash.

There's a striking bifurcation among small businesses regarding how much they value technology and their financial performance.

According to a survey conducted in June, small business owners who expected their revenues for 2010 to increase by more than 25 percent over the prior year, as well as those who thought their revenues would decline by more than 25 percent, value technology (software, web sites, social media)  at the same level of intensity. The survey of 1,200 small business owners was conducted by the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.

BP has engaged another front in its public relations campaign over the Horizon Deepwater oil spill fiasco. The energy conglomerate is now taking on combatants on Twitter—in a concerted effort to quell increasing criticism aimed at the company in the Twitterverse. BP has upped its Twitter followers to over 16,000 from around 2,000 over the course of a month. The company is providing updates of its ongoing response efforts on Twitter.

Part of the problem is that BP has a Twitter nemesis—since May another Tweeter that has been lampooning BP’s efforts at managing the reputational fallout of the oil spill. And that nemesis—BPGlobalPR—not only has more than 10 times as many followers as BP itself—at over 180,000 on Tuesday—but also has stronger search engine (SEO) ties. BPGlobalPR came up first on a Google search of BP and Twitter, which means that so far the fake PR tweeter is winning the battle for online dominance.

Submitted by Caleb Newquist, republished from Going Concern, Accounting News for Accountants and CFOs.

Accounting firms seem to be on the fence when it comes to social media. While the Big 4 recruiting teams (and non-Big 4 for that matter) are into it full force, we're skeptical about the enthusiasm of the firms' leadership, especially the operational leaders.

To them blogs, Facebook, Twitter et al. is a way to waste time and has nothing to do with producing results. But now that Microsoft has announced that it will be including plug-ins for Outlook (sorry, firms on Lotus Notes), we wonder if the momentum behind social media will prove too much to ignore forever.

Submitted by Caleb Newquist, republished from Going Concern, Accounting News for Accountants and CFOs.

The micro-blogging phenom Twitter has faced a lot of doubts about its business plan as its popularity has exploded. The speed that the Company has seen and thus, the demand for monetization, led to the Company announcing the hiring of Ali Rowghani, currently CFO at Pixar, as the Twitter's first financial chief.

The Company raised $100 million back in September and entered into licensing agreements with both Microsoft and Google to feed real time information into their search engines.

This all sounds good but Mr. Rowghani still has his work cut out for him. Here are three challenges he will face as the first CFO of Twitter:

A surprise winner in the downturn appears to be public relations, at least among the bigger guys.

It's an odd twist, since companies tend to cut down on such services when business is bad.  According to recent data, however, spending on public relations in the U.S. rose in both 2008 and 2009. Specifically, it grew by more than 4 percent in 2009 and about 3 percent last year to $3.7 billion, according to research from private-equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson .  By 2010, spending will be more than $8 billion.

Who says companies like Twitter are a shot in the dark?

According to the highly anonymous and perhaps conflicted sources in this story, the company is making a profit of about $5 million, thanks to its deals with search engines Google and Bing.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey loves him some blogging. He has used it to pimp his company and defend his business tactics. But following an op-ed he wrote on health-care reform that appeared in traditional media outlet the Wall Street Journal last week, he struck a nerve with a number of his web-savvy customers, who were quick to turn others on the internet against him, according to the Washington Post .

A Facebook group named Boycott Whole Foods was launched a few days ago and has nearly 14,000 members. The furor has prompted the company to create a forum on its website to discuss the issue. There are more than 10,000 posts, the WP points out.