Optimism in entrepreneurship: Key to overcoming obstacles

Goldilocks might have been trespassing, but she knew her comfort zone. PlanView’s customers seem to have found the same satisfaction with a tool that treats their resources just right.One major advantage, says AIB Banks’ Steve Lynott, is PlanView’s flexibility. His staff can engage the software “at whatever level we want.”

The Situation: $300 million bank loan disguised to look like cash flow, through a series of complicated trades. Three Dynegy employees, including its vice president of taxation, have been charged with setting up a phony company in a scheme to buy and sell gas from Dynegy to turn the $300

John F. HillPraxairChief Information OfficerDanbury, Conn.www.praxair.com Manager’s profile: Hill has guided technology at Praxair, the largest industrial-gas manufacturer in the Americas, since 1997. A Princeton grad and former VP of information technology at PerkinElmer, he also spent time as a consultant. What used to be: Praxair managed using a combination

To Catholic Healthcare Audit Network’s Jill Linden, ACL “is an incredibly powerful tool. The level of analysis we can do with ACL makes [our findings] hard to dispute.” In fact, the power can at times be overwhelming. “If you’re doing all this analysis, you’re coming up with all these exception

Most companies see “zero defects” as little more than a lofty aspiration. But utilities—where Artemis seems to be the project-management tool of choice—cram tens of thousands of maintenance tasks into a scheduled outage, and don’t have the luxury of downtime. That stability counts, even for customers with less-volatile needs.But Artemis

After more than 20 years spent cornering the project-management needs of the architecture, engineering and construction market, Primavera is looking to broaden its scope. Part of that leap means stitching together formerly disparate technologies, including the software now embedded in TeamPlay, and Evolve (which was acquired in March). Bechtel’s Bruce

The Obstacle Yet that has not traditionally been their role. Auditors have certainly been obligated to report and investigate instances of fraud when irregularities are discovered, but in most cases they have not actively sought out fraud. In fact, according to the Institute of Internal Auditing, which has 2,700 members,