It is all about growth.

Finance execs are more upbeat about their hiring plans. And this is happening at the same time they are concerned about issues like health care reform, the budget deficit and housing.

The Federal government giveth, the states taketh away.

The same week businesses learned they could receive some tax breaks from the Federal government, a number of cash strapped governments announced sizable hikes in unemployment rates.

Small business CFOs and finance executives are often stuck using retail online banking solutions to run their businesses and manage finance, as banks and solution vendors badly miss the mark in offering the functionality that companies of this size need. Such is the finding of a new report out by consultancy Celent.

The report says that current solutions for small businesses are often a mishmash of consumer products with bolted-on cash management features. Many of the systems on offer in this space have decades-old navigation and layout, and have a lot of catching up to do in order to come close to satisfying this unique group of customers.

When it comes to data security breaches, the bulk of the attention goes to problems with information storage and transmission. In fact, I recently wrote something about some particularly egregious, recent examples.

 But it turns out there's also a big threat posed by what's known as visual privacy issues-that is, data displayed on screens. With the rise of a mobile workforce, constantly working on laptops, tablets, and smart phones, sending and receiving emails and tapping proprietary corporate information while on the go, security breaches caused by visual information are also increasing.

Pension plans' funding status improved again last month as stocks and interest rates continued to climb.

The typical US corporate pension plan in November saw its status inch up to 80.5 percent from 80.3 percent the prior month, according to monthly statistics published by BNY Mellon Asset Management.    

Assets for the typical plan declined 0.4 percent. A slight gain of 0.6 percent in the US equity markets was offset by a drop of 4.8 percent in international stocks, according to the BNY Mellon.

One of the biggest challenges to further uptake of electronic invoicing is supplier adoption. But creative design studio Big Giant, for one, has made the move and lived to tell the tale.

Not only do new portals offer the traditional benefits associated with automated processes—lower invoicing costs, eliminating paper usage, much-reduced staff resources dedicated to invoice management, for example—but they also can help greatly with cash flow forecasting through automated invoice and purchase order matching and payment date notification.

Credit quality continued to improve in the third quarter...except for financials.

According to a new report from Fitch Ratings, global corporate rating activity year-to-date through the third quarter of 2010 was net positive, with a downgrade to upgrade ratio of 0.9 to 1.

Companies are more willing than ever to look at supply chain finance (SCF) solutions, and their reasons for doing so are changing. When they do look at possible SCF programs, their options have never been more open. New platforms abound with vastly-different models and business cases.

One model which is taking off involves dynamic discounting. It offers the appeal of a corporate-centric solution that focuses on buyer-supplier relations, where the program is driven by the buyer, rather than by a banking partner. At two of the biggest financial technology conferences of the year—namely Sibos and the AFP conference, which both occurred in the past couple of months—SCF conversations were dominated by discussion of dynamic discounting.

With US M&A still going strong both domestically and internationally, bias inherent in traditional valuation methods can lead to incorrect assumptions. Hence it is time to take a new approach to valuation. Or so say the authors of a new M&A methodology out in the Harvard Business Review.

Alexander van Putten— principal at Cameron & Associates and affiliate faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School— Mehrdad Baghai—managing director of boutique advisory firm Alchemy Growth Partners—and Ian MacMillan—principal at Cameron & Associates and Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Wharton—have come up with a twist on traditional methods for valuing a potential acquisition target that they say reduces false positives in the M&A process.

One key to getting the U.S. economy really moving again will be innovation - whether in clean energy, med-tech or the factory floor. Unfortunately, efforts in this direction first bump up against a patent application process that is lengthy, manual and anything but innovative.  As President Obama noted in January, the office receives patent applications electronically, but then prints and scans them in order to get the information into an outdated case management system. No wonder the application backlog currently tops 700,000, according to www.inventionstatistics.com.

As one way to cut the time it takes to receive a patent, which currently is just shy of three years, the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, David Kappos, has proposed a new, three-track application process. Announced in June, the change would allow inventors to choose one of three timetables for the examination of their patents. Track 1 is the speediest; its goal is to achieve final action within 12 months of the request. This Track also would require an extra fee. Track 2 maintains the process currently in place, while Track 3 would allow applicants who file first with the USPTO up to 30 months to prepare the application and decide whether they actually want to request examination. This would enable them to put off at least some of the costs until the invention is ready for commercialization. Or, they could decide to drop the application during the 30-month period, if it became clear it wasn't viable. Finally, applicants would be able to change tracks if needed.