May we live in interesting times !

2011 has been a year of both turmoil and progress in the world and in many businesses. It’s certainly been a roller coaster ride!

Why CONTROLS Monitoring is not enough . . .

This picture says it all for me. I could stop here . . . .  . 

The car park barrier is the 'control' over access and use of the car park. The automatic gate opens only when you swipe your employee badge on the reader and it only lets one car through at a time. This way, it is clear that only authorised people can use the facility and that a record is kept of each visit. The automated control works perfectly and as designed. There is even a regular testing and maintenance cycle!

The tyre tracks tell us whether this control is achieving its desired effect.

Obviously not in this case!

Thats why, irrespective of the debate on where the responsibility lies, it is important to test key controls in business and equally important to check the 'tyre tracks'. The tyre tracks tell us what is actually happening and whether our risks are being effectively mitigated.

The CFO Agenda and Performance, Risk & Compliance - The Next Chapter

At the end of last year, I read an excellent book by Jeremy Hope entitled 'Reinventing the CFO' (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinventing-CFO-Financial-Managers-Transform/dp/1591399459/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292578362&sr=1-1 ) .

The book challenges some long held assumptions about centralisation, planning, budgetting and forecasting as well as the role of the finance function as real business partner. The chapter headings really encapsulate the focus, but I recommend this book to anyone looking for breakthrough approaches to business as a whole, not just finance. Here are just a few;

Best Practices in Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM)

I just reviewed this webcast again, and it is an excellent case study in increasing visibility and coverage over business risks and automating SOX control testing at Philip Morris International (PMI). 100% coverage, not sample testing. Entirely complementary with a drive to increase and enhance automated controls in SAP.

The 'End of Days' and 'Test Once - Comply Many'

Tomorrow sees yet another compliance regime, the UK Bribery Act, come into force. A much debated legislation which remains unclear in parts but reflects and puts even more teeth into the key tenets of the FCPA reglation from the US. Both these regulations have broad arms and dont limit their interest to UK and US companies. Even China is on the anti-corruption bandwagon with their own legislation recently announced.

Internal Audit and a Changing World

I always read the annual CEO, CFO, CAE, CIO reports from the Big 4 firms. They usually arrive in the first quarter of the year and are based on interviews carried out up to a year before. As a result, they are not usually as topical as they claim. But it is always interesting to compare these macro surveys and opinion pieces with your own direct experience. You typically see obvious areas of convergence and a few divergent ones. If the two perspectives are too far out, I tend to rely on personal experience and interactions with clients and business partners.

Risk and Performance, Transformation & Continuous Improvement

Following on from our earlier discussions on Finance Transformation, process change and continuous improvement, I coincidentally hit on three very interesting and relevent items in my mailbox.

In the first mail that caught my eye, Gartner Group, the well regarded technology analysts, had just released a report entitled 'Developing Key Risk Indicators: Developing Causal Chains to Link Risk to Business Outcomes'. I was intrigued by this line of thought, in no small part because it reflects my own experience and thinking, as well as some of the insights in our webcast I described in my previous post. I believe there is a lot of valuable thinking and action that will come from a better appreciation that risk and performance are two sides of the same coin, not different topics to be managed by different organisational units with different performance measures!

Finance Transformation: The Next Chapter

I have just finished an interesting discussion with Vagn Hansen, former VP FInance, Finance Operations at Shell and David Mitchell, Partner - Finance & Performance Management at Kurt Salmon.

The discussion and presentation were an exploration of our respective and collective experiences in large scale change, especially that Finance variety typically referred to as 'transformation'. Some key insights came out of the discussion.

Business Performance at a macro level – The Economic Wonder that is Germany

In the last three weeks I attended two very different networking events. The first, European Technology Forum aka ‘Snowball’ in Gstaad and the second, the Deutsche Bank Business Leaders event with Dr Josef Ackermann in London.

‘Snowball’ is very relaxed affair in the mountains with some 52 entrepreneurs, business owners and investors from around the world. Some great people, sharp minds (during the day, anyway!), fascinating experiences and some genuinely thought provoking content sessions and discussions intermingled with some skiing and dining. As an aside, there was talk about renaming the event as the World Technology Forum to better align with the geographic spread of the attendees. There was some consternation however at the requisite acronym which would be WTF!