Driving Process Excellence in Shared Services

The range of available cost efficiency benchmarks are as wide for organisations using a Shared Services model as for those that do not.  There is a major focus on performance measures and continuous improvement, but these have still not delivered the goods. We need an effective approach and experiences for driving process performance gains through understanding the nature of exceptions in business, recognising them in the continuous improvement cycle and using smart analytics to manage the Key Exception Indicators.

Shared Services Leaders share Best Practices

I was fortunate to be invited to speak last week at the European Summit for Leaders in Shared Services. Speakers included Shared Services leaders from organisations including Siemens, Coca Cola Hellenic, BP, Robert McBride, COLT Services, Rolls Royce, Shell, Hertz, Balfour Beatty and Novartis. It was an excellent 2 day event in central London and about 80 delegates joined for a genuinely interactive and collaborative forum.

What to expect from 2013. Letter to the C-Suite

Happy New Year! Best wishes for 2013 and good luck with the resolutions, although mine typically die a nasty death in the second week of January when reality hits.

This year however I have resolved to get fit enough for some serious heli-skiing in northern Canada at the start of February. The thought of skiing 20,000 vertical feet or 6,000 vertical metres DAILY in the mountainous back country has stiffened my determination and so far, so good. Of course, if you never hear from me again, I am probably entombed on a snowy peak somewhere . . .

On a broader note, the business and finance community has entered 2013 on a more optimistic note than in previous years. The big economic fears of 2012 have largely been avoided, some at the last minute. Western governments remain heavily indebted, and will remain so until inflation starts to erode it. Big companies, where business models remain relevant, are sitting on large piles of cash. The BRICS continue to strengthen. China overtook Europe in the market for automobile sales. Investment and technology innovation seems to have re-started with Silicon Valley awash with new companies and office accommodation prices rising.

Top 5 Favourite Posts of 2012

As I emerge from post festive season recovery and face the new year, it is interesting to review what have been the most read, and therefore apparently the most interesting, topics in this blog during 2012.

Making a drama out of an accounting crisis!

I am very pleased to welcome a guest blog post today from Irina Predescu. Irina graduated from London School of Economics last year and has since immersed herself in the world of business risk, financial control, finance processes and compliance. She is too young to remember the events described below first time around . . . . .

Making a drama out of a (accounting) crisis!

This December saw the anniversary of the Enron scandal. 11 years after the company’s collapse was a key catalyst for the SOX legislation, some might think Enron is a thing of the past. Recently however, it struck me to see how this topic still resonates with today’s wider audience, not so much via the Wall Street Journal or Fortune articles, but through the means of entertainment.  

Quantum Finance - are Performance Indicators what they seem?

There is a popular assertion made by theoretical physicists that in the minutiae of the quantum world, the process of observing an object actually changes it. This is one of those concepts that makes my head hurt and is likely to cause a nosebleed if I think about it too hard.

I have long been a believer in those business school mantras of ‘you can’t manage what your don’t measure’ and ‘you don’t get what you expect, you get what you inspect’. It does make you wonder if some of these B-School professors would be better plying their trade as literature buffs or poets though; such is the elegance of these phrases.

Recently, however, I have become somewhat unsure of myself and I am no longer as convinced as I once was. Or perhaps, I am reaching another transcendental stage of understanding (unlikely!). Perhaps what we measure in business changes as we observe it also?

Insights from ISACA's EuroCACS ISRM Conference

Munich is always a popular place as October approaches, but I missed the wonders of the 'biergartens' in full flourish. Last week I joined a large gathering of IS Audit, Risk and Controls specialists at ISACA’s annual EuroCACS and ISRM conference at the Hilton by the Englischer Garten in the city.

Six Strings to GRC Success . . .

I am just about to go into 'silent running' mode as I depart to build another guitar on the wonderful Balearic/Piteuse island of Formentera . . . So you won't hear much from me for a few weeks unless you follow my 'Guitarra - Part Deux' blog.

BUT, thinking of my impending trip did provide some inspiration for a little treatise on performance, risk and compliance from the perspective of a guitar maker of average skill. Since most business processes are performed by people with average levels of skill and experience, I thought this might be an interesting parallel, and, as I thought about it more, it stimulated some interesting thoughts. Well, at least, they interested me!

Risk Awareness & The Bear

Take a look at the awareness test here, before you read the rest of this post.

Have you looked at this?

OK . . .  you get the point . . .

This is an interesting phenomenon . . . .

STOP! The Controls Madness . . . Part deux!

In Part 1 of this post I talked about the fact that the relationship between better risk management and more control is not intuitive or even direct. We discussed the shortcomings of the traffic light system as a control. We also touched on the issues in financial control with the false sense of security created by automated controls, such as those for purchase limits for example. You can read Part I here . . .

The same challenge exists for the classic accounting control,