Duties of a Controller:

Duties of a Controller:

• Prepare accurate and timely financial statements
• Assess, design and set up accounting systems to ensure effective and efficient recording of accounting transactions
• Evaluate and recommend changes to internal controls
• Identify critical success factors and ways to measure them
• Monitor adherence to established operating procedures and internal controls
• Prepare/review general ledger accounts to ensure the integrity and accuracy of accounts
• Manage and perform accounting and month end closing
• Assist in analysis of Buy vs. lease decisions
• Manage fixed asset accounting and reporting
• Manage cash flows, collections and payments
• Provide management with financial and operational information vital to the decision-making process including revenue streams, costs and margins
• Review and analyze results for operational management
• Facilitate management meetings
• Hire, train and retain competent accounting staff
• Effectively develop and manage accounting staff
• Assist with tax functions as well as special projects
• Coordinate activities of external auditors
• Prepare support schedules for year-end work papers
• Perform other assignments as directed

The 7 Success Principles of Steve Jobs

As we kick off the New Year, leaders, entrepreneurs and business owners are looking for new and innovative ways to grow their brands. Who better to turn to than one of the most innovative leaders of our time—Apple CEO Steve Jobs?  Through first-person interviews with Apple employees, experts, and analysts, as well as Steve Jobs’ own words over the past thirty years, I discovered that there are 7 principles largely responsible for Jobs’ breakthrough success.  These are described in my new book, The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, and they are principles that I will discuss in blog posts over the coming weeks.  Briefly, here are the principles that anyone can use to “think differently” about their service, product or brand.

Principle One: Do what you love. Steve Jobs once told a group of employees, “People with passion can change the world for the better.”  Jobs has followed his heart his entire life and that passion, he says, has made all the difference.  It’s very difficult to come up with new, creative, and novel ideas unless you are passionate about moving society forward.

Principle Two: Put a dent in the universe. Passion fuels the rocket, but vision directs the rocket to its ultimate destination. In 1976, when Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple, Jobs’ vision was to put a computer in the hands of everyday people.  In 1979, Jobs saw an early and crude graphical user interface being demonstrated at the Xerox research facility in Palo Alto, California.  He knew immediately that the technology would make computers appealing to “everyday people.”  That technology eventually became The Macintosh, which changed everything about the way we interact with computers.  Xerox scientists didn’t realize its potential because their “vision” was limited to making new copiers.  Two people can see the exactly the same thing, but perceive it differently based on their vision.

Principle Three: Kick start your brain. Steve Jobs once said “Creativity is connecting things.”  Connecting things means seeking inspiration from other industries.  At various times, Jobs has found inspiration in a phone book, Zen meditation, visiting India, a food processor at Macy’s, or The Four Seasons hotel chain.  Jobs doesn’t “steal” ideas as much as he uses ideas from other industries to inspire his own creativity.

Principle Four: Sell dreams, not products. To Steve Jobs, people who buy Apple products are not “consumers.”  They are people with hopes, dreams and ambitions.  He builds products to help people achieve their dreams.  He once said, “some people think you’ve got to be crazy to buy a Mac, but in that craziness we see genius.”  How do you see your customers?  Help them unleash their inner genius and you’ll win over their hearts and minds.

Principle Five: Say no to 1,000 things. Steve Jobs once said, “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”  He is committed to building products with simple, uncluttered design.  And that commitment extends beyond products. From the design of the iPod to the iPad, from the packaging of Apple’s products, to the functionality of the Web site, in Apple’s world, innovation means eliminating the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Principle Six: Create insanely great experiences. The Apple store has become the world’s best retailer by introducing simple innovations any business can adopt to create deeper, more emotional connections with their customers.  For example, there are no cashiers in an Apple store. There are experts, consultants, even geniuses, but no cashiers.  Why?  Because Apple is not in the business of moving boxes; they are in the business of enriching lives.  Big difference.

Principle Seven: Master the message. Steve Jobs is the world’s greatest corporate storyteller, turning product launches into an art form.  You can have the most innovative idea in the world, but if you can’t get people excited about it, it doesn’t matter.

Simply put, innovation is a new way of doing things that results in positive change. Innovation is attainable by anyone at any organization, regardless of title or position.  Make innovation a part of your brands’ DNA by thinking differently about your business challenges.

Apple Mkt Cap Hits $500B

Half a trillion dollars.

With a little up move after hours, Apple now has a market capitalization of $500.1 billion.

Astonishing.

The stock is now at yet another all time high. After rallying $9.65, or 1.8%, to $535.41 in the regular session – closing at the high for the day and giving the company a market cap of $499.2 billion – the stock has inched up another 96 cents after hours to $536.37. That’s just enough to push the stock’s market cap to the north side of a half trillion bucks.

The stock is now up 32.4% for the year to date.

Apple now has at least twice the market cap of all but three other U.S.-listed public companies:

• ExxonMobil at $410.7 billion.
• PetroChina at $281.9 billion.
• Microsoft at $267.4 billion.

The Street‘s mean analyst target for the stock is $572.10; the median target is $600; the highest target on the Street is $700.

To get to a trillion dollars, Apple’s shares would have to hit $1,073.

Maybe by that point the company will be paying a dividend.

Update: I would note that Apple is in rarified air here, but it is not the first company to cross the $500 billion level; PetroChina, Exxon, Microsoft, General Electric and Cisco Systems have all visited this neighborhood before; but note that none of the others were able to hold above the magical half-billion mark. (PetroChina at one point had a valuation north of $1 trillion.)

Intrapreneurship

In 1992, The American Heritage Dictionary acknowledged the popular use of a new word, intrapreneur, to mean “A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation”. Intrapreneurship is now known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.

View on strategic planning

I have a strategy and a plan about where I’d like to be in three years, but I never let the plan get in the way of the first shot in the battle.

I see a lot of organizations trying to make the world fit their plan.  It’s not possible. The world is changing too quickly. The ability to be nimble is the single determinant between those that are succeeding and those that are failing. Rigidity is the enemy of progress. The most successful companies embrace the world’s chaotic energy. Chaos opens up opportunities.

 

“the trust principles”, drives our DNA and ensures that we are ethical, honest, and not conflicted in the way we works.

I really believe we’re doing something for the world.  People are passionate and incredibly energetic.  And at the core of our culture is organizational curiosity.

I think curiosity is an enormous determinant of organizational and individual success.

I try to push our company out into the world.  It’s very easy for companies to get introspective.  It’s very easy for companies to be convinced that the actions inside are the answers. When you’re a big company, there’s a lot of action inside, but we must be curious and nimble utilizing real time information.  That is why rigidity is the real the enemy.

 

I do something called “deep dives” with everybody from my general council to my head of sales to my head of marketing 3 of 4 times a year. We don’t talk about results.  We talk about the world and the business and strategy.

We don’t discuss, “How are you doing according to your plan?”  Instead we discuss, “How are we going to be the world’s best in India?”  “How are we going to double the size of this business in three years?”

And a lot of times, those are just very whiteboard-type thinking sessions which I think ultimately drive organizational curiosity.

Leadership philosophy

I try to avoid being hierarchical. I try to be optimistic and curious and encourage innovation everywhere.

Running a company is fine.  Changing a company is what energizes both me personally and the organization.  There’s no such thing as going sideways.  If you’re going sideways, people get antsy, they get miserable, the organization stagnates and you’re going backwards even if you kid yourself that you’re going sideways. So I try to help the company get into that energizing innovation and breakthrough.

 

What CEOs Can Learn From Jeremy Lin

As everyone looks for lessons to understand the Jeremy Lin ‘Linsanity’ phenomenon, I viewed it from my lens of having interviewed 250 CEOs and as a Knicks fan following Jeremy Lin before he became a sensation. So in seeking truth, I decided to crunch some numbers. The results were compelling and revealed that there are definitive lessons CEOs can learn and apply from Jeremy Lin. This article has two parts: first my analysis of Lin with CEO lessons, and second, direct CEO perspective where I talk with Michael Chen, recent CEO of GE Media Finance and President of an NBC News Business, about Jeremy Lin.

1. Identify the Superstar on your bench. An unexpected insight came when I compared the 11 games Jeremy Lin played for the Knicks before his breakthrough with the 11 games he played after February 4th. I calculated points and assists per minute. The finding: In Lin’s 11 games after his breakthrough playing an average of 34 minutes per game he averaged 23.9 points per game and 9.1 assists per game; in his games prior to breakthrough his averages using 34 minutes per game would have been 20.4 points per game and 9.7 assists per game. Net/net, before his breakthrough, Jeremy Lin was already achieving at the same high level, but was just under the radar. To Coach Mike D’Antoni’s credit, the moment Lin had just one great game, he immediately made Lin a starter.  The message to CEOs is look under the radar in your organization — analyze P&Ls of overlooked businesses or current smaller untapped markets, seek breakthrough ideas from the depth of your organization, and view carefully potentially overlooked data because there may be a superstar on the bench.

2. Play team ball. When Jeremy Lin took over the point guard position, the Knicks won 9 of 11 games; during the prior games the Knicks lost 9 of 11. And during this turnaround, they were mostly playing without their two perennial all-stars. So what happened? The Knicks created a winning corporate culture. Once a culture is defined, the key to a team is everyone has a role. As it turns out Jeremy Lin’s role as point guard is what I define as a high-leverage position. He orchestrates. Lin’s passing ability immediately made everyone else better, and low percentage shots became high percentage shots. For example, Steve Novak prior to Lin’s leadership was a background character without a defined role averaging only 3 points a game; since February 4th, Novak has averaged 12 points a game off the bench and is a top 5 NBA leader with 46% 3-point shooting percentage, and is now looked upon as an option to take the final shot of the game.

Playing team ball, the Knicks followed their new leader Jeremy Lin’s lead and started playing team defense as well. The Knicks 11 games prior let teams score an average of 96 points per game. The 11 games with Lin leading the Knicks became one of the NBA’s elite teams holding teams to just 90 points per game. Knick fans witnessed something they hadn’t really seen since 1973 when Frazier, Bradley, DeBusschere, Reed, Lucas and Monroe played true team basketball team offense and defense. I have fond memories as a kid sitting with my dad watching the beauty of team basketball, and now I can sit with my kids and witness team ball together. The message to CEOs is that team ball wins, and the first step to team ball is having a defined culture and identifying high-leverage positions whose occupants make everyone else better. Just like a winning coach has 48 minutes of intense team basketball, a winning CEO has each associate successfully playing their roles and integrating them with others every day–playing team ball a full 48 minutes.

To gain further perspective adding to the two insights – identify the super star on your bench and play team ball – following are some questions I asked recent CEO Michael Chen about his take on Jeremy Lin.

Michael, as a recent CEO, what do you think companies can learn from “Linsanity”?

Robert, every corporation probably has 20-30 hidden Jeremy Lin’s in its organization.  No, I’m not talking about just Harvard grads or Asian-Americans. I am talking about employees (men/women, diverse/non-diverse) who have the potential to become future leaders, but for one reason or another have yet to be discovered. As corporations get bigger, bureaucracy inevitably creeps in.  Sometimes, companies create several layers of management between employees and senior leaders, making it very difficult for these “Jeremy Lin’s” to be discovered.  Therefore, companies should create a process that gives potential superstar employees an opportunity to showcase their talents in front of senior leaders.  When I was at GE, we created a “Growth Competition” which allowed anyone with an innovative idea to enter the competition.  They needed to create a team, develop the concept, and submit a detailed plan to a group of judges, who then decided whether or not it would qualify for a presentation to the Vice Chairman and other leaders of GE. It was like the “American Idol” of finding future business leaders, except our judges were nicer.

What advice would you give the hidden “Jeremy Lin’s” in organizations?

Personal branding is essential. A few years ago, I developed a personal branding model which I call the “4 I’s”: have integrity, make an impact, beinclusive, and inspire people.  1) Have Integrity – As Jeremy Lin has shown to the Knicks, be dependable, trustworthy, accountable, and loyal to the organization. 2) Make an Impact – Whenever you have an opportunity to showcase your talents, give it your all. If you succeed, fantastic.  If it doesn’t work out, at least you know you went down swinging.  3) Be Inclusive – Don’t try to do it alone.  Like basketball, business is a team sport.  Share the ball with others, involve them in the decision making, and help them succeed, and 4) Inspire People – Teams and corporations are looking for leaders who can energize and bring out the best in others.  So like Jeremy Lin, be passionate, give others hope and respect, recognize them for the credit they deserve, and always stay humble.  He is living proof that the 4 “I’s” Personal branding model works!

Michael, you are an Asian American of Chinese heritage, just like Jeremy Lin.  How does it feel that he has become an overnight sensation in the NBA?

To be honest, I am overwhelmed with pride and joy.  The Asian culture encourages people to be humble, and not self promote, which may give off the perception that Asian Americans are not aggressive enough to make it as an athlete nor assertive enough to be leaders in this county. Hopefully, Jeremy Lin will help break that stereotype, and we will see many more Asian Americans in professional sports and leadership positions.  Jeremy Lin has shown all of us that you can be both humble and successful, which makes me proud of my Asian heritage.  In addition, his success also makes me proud to be born and live in this country as an American, where people are given the opportunity to fulfill their lifelong dreams.

What do you see as Jeremy Lin’s future?

I truly believe Jeremy Lin will be a star in the NBA, but I feel a little for him.  It’s almost like he has the whole world on his shoulders, and that he must continue to excel every single night or he will be disappointing the Knicks,New York City, and even our country.  I think those are tough expectations to fulfill.   He will have his off nights, but I do believe he is the real deal, and the Knicks will be rewarded over the long term for giving Jeremy Lin the opportunity to prove he can be the starting point guard for their team.

. . . Thanks Michael. So in summary, in business unlike sports, it’s not always easy to know if you win. And yet a CEO is charged with making their business win. Perhaps the greatest lesson comes from not just watching, but listening to Jeremy Lin – a man who had no athletic scholarships out of high school, was undrafted out of college, graduated from Harvard, and is the first American player of Chinese descent to play in the NBA.  Jeremy Lin reminds us, “Don’t let people tell you what you can’t do.”

Top 100 companies 2012

Rank ▾ Company Job growth U.S. employees 1 Google 33% 18,500 2 Boston Consulting Group 10% 1,958 3 SAS Institute 8% 6,046 4 Wegmans Food Markets 5% 41,717 5 Edward Jones 1% 36,937 6 NetApp 30% 6,887 7 Camden Property Trust -2% 1,678 8 Recreational Equipment (REI) 12% 10,466 9 CHG Healthcare Services 17% 1,312 10 Quicken Loans 20% 3,808 11 Zappos.com 70% 3,003 12 Mercedes-Benz USA 2% 1,680 13 DPR Construction 18% 1,265 14 DreamWorks Animation 8% 2,151 15 NuStar Energy 6% 1,512 16 Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants 4% 6,996 17 JM Family Enterprises -1% 3,685 18 Chesapeake Energy 23% 10,502 19 Intuit 9% 7,102 20 USAA 7% 23,211 21 Robert W. Baird 5% 2,509 22 The Container Store 11% 3,495 23 Qualcomm 6% 13,353 24 Alston & Bird 3% 1,645 25 Ultimate Software 15% 1,209 26 Burns & McDonnell 5% 3,165 27 Salesforce.com 39% 3,802 28 Devon Energy -6% 3,286 29 PCL Construction -5% 1,262 30 Bingham McCutchen -7% 1,489 31 Scottrade 9% 3,139 32 Whole Foods Market 6% 60,213 33 Goldman Sachs N.A. N.A. 34 Nugget Market 8% 1,135 35 Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Co. 3% 1,311 36 Southern Ohio Medical Center 18% 2,276 37 Plante Moran 1% 1,476 38 W. L. Gore & Associates 2% 5,852 39 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 1% 3,580 40 SVB Financial Group 9% 1,349 41 Adobe 11% 5,296 42 Baptist Health South Florida 10% 13,302 43 Novo Nordisk N.A. 3,961 44 Balfour Beatty Construction -2% 2,041 45 National Instruments 7% 2,708 46 Intel 4% 44,209 47 American Fidelity Assurance 0% 1,490 48 PricewaterhouseCoopers 9% 30,569 49 Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta -1% 6,616 50 World Wide Technology 23% 1,470 51 Allianz Life Insurance 2% 1,711 52 Autodesk 5% 2,798 53 Methodist Hospital 8% 12,152 54 Baker Donelson 3% 1,142 55 Men’s Wearhouse 2% 14,784 56 Scripps Health 2% 12,006 57 Marriott International 3% 108,939 58 Perkins Coie 7% 1,820 59 Ernst & Young 6% 24,347 60 American Express 4% 27,235 61 Nordstrom 6% 52,431 62 Build-A-Bear Workshop 0% 3,564 63 General Mills 1% 16,939 64 TDIndustries 9% 1,554 65 Atlantic Health -2% 7,255 66 QuikTrip 3% 11,615 67 Deloitte 7% 41,125 68 Genentech 1% 11,592 69 Umpqua Bank 5% 2,244 70 Teach For America 14% 1,469 71 Mayo Clinic 3% 41,949 72 EOG Resources 13% 2,063 73 Starbucks 3% 109,477 74 Rackspace Hosting 37% 3,027 75 FactSet Research Systems 22% 1,663 76 Microsoft -4% 53,410 77 Aflac -4% 4,242 78 Publix Super Markets 1% 147,760 79 Mattel -4% 5,178 80 Stryker 24% 10,368 81 SRC 7% 1,153 82 Hasbro 3% 3,129 83 Bright Horizons Family Solutions 5% 14,343 84 Booz Allen Hamilton 7% 24,819 85 Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts 6% 12,439 86 Hitachi Data Systems 7% 2,200 87 The Everett Clinic 4% 2,001 88 OhioHealth 4% 12,924 89 Morningstar 8% 1,364 90 Cisco 7% 34,847 91 CarMax 16% 15,565 92 Accenture 9% 34,000 93 GoDaddy.com 25% 3,274 94 KPMG 5% 20,823 95 Navy Federal Credit Union 8% 7,745 96 Meridian Health 27% 9,333 97 Schweitzer Engineering Labs 27% 1,992 98 Capital One 7% 27,912 99 Darden Restaurants 12% 169,516 100 Intercontinental Hotels Group -2%

Paul Buchheit

Paul Buchheit is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He was the creator and lead developer of Gmail. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested the company’s now-famous motto “Don’t be evil” in a 2000 meeting on company values.The motto was originally coined in 1999 by Amit Patel, one of Google’s first engineers, in a collaborative resistance against the company’s hiring policies.

Buchheit grew up in Webster, New York and went to college at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked at Intel and later became the 23rd employee at Google.

Buchheit was a founder of the startup FriendFeed, which was launched in 2007 and was acquired by Facebook in 2009, in a private transaction.

In 2010, Buchheit left Facebook to become a partner at the venture capital firm Y Combinator. From 2006 (when he started investing) until 2008, Paul invested about $1.21 million in 32 different companies. He also continues to oversee angel investments of his own, in (by his own estimate) “about 40” startups.

He won the 2011 The Economist Innovation Awards for the Computing and telecommunications

NIIT TECH overview

NIIT Technologies is a Global IT solutions organisation, with its footprint spanning North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Ranking among India’s Top 20 IT services players, the company offers a gamut of services in the areas of Application Development Management and Enterprise Solutions, encompassing Managed Services and Business Process Outsourcing.

The company has been building differentiators in select industry verticals such as Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Travel, Transportation and Logistics (TTL), Manufacturing and Distribution based on its deep domain knowledge and new approaches to customer experience management.

Specialties

IT Solutions, SAP, Banking, Insurance, Travel Transportation & Logistics, Manufacturing, Government

links

http://www.cbsnews.com business and tech news.