Controlling passwords is easy now

If you're active on the web as I am, you probably have dozens of passwords to remember for all the controlled sites you visit. I have nearly a hundred so far. If you keep them all in your head, you're clearly smarter than I am, and if you've got them written down on a piece of paper somewhere, you're clearly not.

My solution is RoboForm, a password manager that is itself password controlled, but once activated will with one click fill in the user ID and password that you've selected for whatever site you're trying to access. Thus one humongous (if you want) password to open RoboForm, and ease thereafter no matter how many controlled sites you visit. I think they offer a free version that will enable 10 or so passwords to be saved before you have to register and pay a modest one-time license fee. Great utility program.

Procurement software? Bah, Humbug!

The Wall Street Journal carried an article this week discussing web spending tools, that is to say software that helps businesses control costs by telling them where they’re spending their money. It’s called procurement software and it sells for big bucks to big companies. Most companies are not big companies, and most of them can get the same results by learning how to read their own financial reports, IF they also learn how to ask for the information they don’t see in the standard forms their software spits out every month.

Too many managers are frustrated because they don’t see what they need or they don’t understand what they see and they don’t know what to do about it. They don’t understand what is possible and reasonable to expect from their financial departments, so they accept that it’s a different language and they lower their expectations. With all due respect to their skills, I call this Financial Illiteracy.

Some of the most creative CEOs I’ve known keep numbers on the back of an envelope – or the equivalent – because it’s the only think they understand. How sad is that? If you know anyone in that state of affairs, do them a huge favor. Tell them to call me.

As always, I welcome your comments.