How members learn from other members.

• Position: The Researchforum

According to FERF's bylaws, our mission is to advance the profession and practices of financial management through research and education. How is this done? To put it simply: it's by helping financial executives and FEI members learn from their peers.

This often starts with FEI's technical committees. FERF researchers attend committee meetings in order to identify the professional topics and issues that are top of mind for financial executives. After additional background research, proposals are developed and discussed during monthly conference calls of FERF's Research Committee--comprised of FEI members who represent the committees and FEI chapters across the U.S. The Research Committee ensures not only that topics are relevant to the "member on the street" but that the research remains objective and unbiased.

For fiscal 2007 (which ended on June 30), this process resulted in 39 publications and articles--all of which were offered free of charge to FEI members (a membership benefit).

FERF also provides research updates at chapter leadership board meetings, resulting in development of chapter programs, which include among others, professional development sessions (PD) based on FERF research reports. For example, Building an Agile Finance Function, an Issue Alert released in June, was based on a topic suggested by FEI's Committee on Finance and Information Technology. The alert highlights best practices in sourcing from interviews with both public and private company members whose companies are also...