Conservative accounting is in again. It's back to basics. The emphasis today is on what a company's real bottom-line earnings are, an emphasis that makes understanding earnings more important than ever. Compounding the push for finance organizations to produce faster and more in-depth analysis is the seemingly contradictory demand for those same organizations to cut costs and people.

Companies, such as NCR Corporation, Continental Airlines, and 3M Corporation, that use an EDW for financial management have shortened their close cycles, reduced overhead, tightened expenses, reduced inventories, and provided managers across the business with the fresh, accurate information needed to quickly make better strategic and tactical decisions.