From the editor.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Editorial

Ah, technology: It gets the lion's share of credit for most of the productivity increases we've seen in the past few decades, and often rightfully so. But as our cover story points out, companies can pick up productivity considerably without having to spend another nickel on new systems.

Three principals from a New Jersey-based management consulting firm argue that within finance and other business-support groups, productivity gains of 10 to even 30 percent are collectively possible through small, incremental improvements in work processes and management decision-making like standardizing charts of accounts or eliminating manual handoffs of spreadsheets. A major blessing: they are easier and faster to implement than system implementations--sometimes producing results in a matter of weeks--and far less likely to create upheaval within the organization.

U.S. companies and their foreign rivals are perhaps equally likely to turn to foreign exchange hedges to curb their risk, notes writer Gregory Millman, since currency swings can have big impacts on results. As Dow Chemical Co. CFO Pedro Reinhard told him, "Globalization has not minimized the issues relating to currencies. It's one of the conditions of doing business, and the better you integrate it into strategy and operations, the better off the company will be."

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Mandatory auditor rotation isn't exactly a warm subject for most corporations or auditors, who question the expense and the benefits, Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) finds. It does remain an area of interest for regulators and governance activists, though, even as a published study by a trio of accounting professors suggests that long-standing auditors have exerted a tempering effect on the earnings exuberance of some managements.

Insurance accounting, convergence and the challenges inherent in the U.S. market are among the chief issues...