PALO ALTO, CA -- 31 October 2001 -- In the wake of the 9/11 disaster, leaders of global corporations face unprecedented challenges in responding to much more chaotic and dangerous business conditions. “Economic times in the last month have changed dramatically,” says Rita Iorfida, VP at PeopleSoft.

Iorfida spells out some of the challenges now facing CEOs and CFOs in a new WebCast released by Killen & Associates, a leading market research firm focusing on critical financial supply chain issues.

“The flow of products that people are going to buy is going to be considerably different now,” Iorfida said. The way corporate executives actually manage business is going to be very different. “If any organization is still living with the plan they had July 1, 2001, they’re fooling themselves,” she added. “They are not managing their business in a strategic way.”

The sudden changes now engulfing business highlight the limitations of traditional financial management systems and strategic planning systems. In the Killen WebCast, Iorfida describes how these systems need to be improved to allow corporations to respond faster in this new environment.

“Corporate executives need to have the information that allows them to look at things right now and change the way they manage business going forward so that they can make the right decisions. Having systems that allow them to react quickly is an absolute necessity.”

The urgent need for CEOs and CFOs today is to be able to integrate their operating plans with their forward-looking strategic vision, she said. The 9/11 disaster shows that the process of revising operating plans to reflect the latest information “is much more dynamic than we ever thought.” Otherwise, executives are working with an operating plan that is completely out of date and will not achieve their objectives.

Iorfida believes the key to meeting those challenges is integrating more financial applications so that CFOs have the right tools to better manage their business. PeopleSoft has developed its PeopleSoft Portal solution with CFOs in mind. “It brings together a myriad of information sources and different financial applications into one content view, making it an enabling technology,” states Iorfida. “It gives CFOs the information and control they need.”

The Killen & Associates WebCast can been seen in entirety at http://www.killen.com/insights.

About PeopleSoft, Inc. (http://www.peoplesoft.com)

Pleasanton, CA-based PeopleSoft Inc. is a global provider of collaborative enterprise software. PeopleSoft's integrated applications include Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Service Automation, Supply Chain Management, Human Resource Management, Financial Management, and Enterprise Performance Management.
About Killen & Associates (http://www.killen.com)

Killen & Associates is the leading market research firm that helps major enterprises identify and improve critical financial supply chain processes. It provides it clients with business studies, and assists them in selecting suppliers. The public is invited to log on to http://www.killen.com/insights to view our current executive WebCasts, and to sign up for The Killen Alert, a weekly newsletter of the events taking place in this marketplace. Killen & Associates maintains offices in Palo Alto, California; Richmond, Surrey, UK; and Zurich, Switzerland.

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