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The Executive Newsletter of TheOfficialBoard

Enterprise Risk Management and the New Market Realities

By Craig Farris, Accenture


craig-farris1In the aftermath of the financial crisis, companies are waking up to a world of new market realities. Adaptive approaches, sharpened competitive instincts, and the power of enterprise risk management are now necessary for success.

According to a recent Accenture survey, executives expect risk management to have a major impact on sustainable profitability (61%) and competitive advantage (53%). Yet, less than a third indicated they believe their company is effective at managing their risks.

Dissatisfaction with a company’s risk management strategy is due to one or more of the following factors:

  • The company finds itself stuck in a risk assessment mold
  • Risk management is viewed as an “extra” activity
  • The company’s leadership is not sure how to make use of risk management
  • Reporting systems do not produce the right information
  • Risk management leadership does not have a clear view of the value of this capability

There are clear steps a company can take to move forward:

1. Break out of the value fog – define the value expected from enterprise risk management, holding the program accountable for meeting set goals

2. Establish clear risk governance structures to see how decision-making flows and supports a systematic view of risk

3. Support the company’s risk efforts with timely, insightful reports and information flow

4. Ensure the firm has the right analytics in place to gain a comprehensive understanding of risk and how to leverage it for business advantage

5. Be bold, seize risk management’s potential for adding value to the business.

For companies determined to succeed, enterprise risk management is the tool that takes them down the road towards enhancing the value of their business. A tepid approach to enterprise risk management will concede the future to those who take the bold initiative.

Craig Faris is executive director – Risk Management, Retail and Public Service areas for Accenture Risk Management.  Based in Washington D.C., he has over 25 years of global, corporate and consultancy experience in the retail, consumer products and energy sectors. See more at Accenture 2009 Global Risk Management Survey

Filed under: Business Development — @ 12:51 pm on June 17, 2010
 
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What does the Internet say about you?

By Manuel Zebeida

manuel-zebeida1We have all become private investigators. As partners or potential customers, most of us search the web to prepare for our next meeting with a company or executive.

Given the ever growing number of sites, blogs and even print media, it is harder and harder for an executive to keep track of what is being said about a company, a colleague, or him or herself.

To help you get started, there are a few simple, free tools to help you stay current and on top of what is being said about you or about your company. You can schedule personal alerts to keep you constantly informed.

Google Alerts is the best known system. It is a great way to get a global view and covers the first 50 results on the search engine.

Twitter Search Engine provides what is being said on Twitter and TwitterBeep.com alerts you daily on your key search words.

Pickanews focuses on the European media online and offline (which is unique). Every morning, we’ll send you an alert with what is said in the print and online media. It’s great information to have at your fingertips before your first meeting of the day.

Search engines such as ZoomInfo or 123People track what is said about an executive on the web. They list their sources including the executive’s social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

Finally, I suggest you conduct your own test. Take at least a few moments to schedule free daily alerts from different services with your company name and your name.

It is always better to know how you and your business are perceived by others. You and your communication team may then work even better on developing your brands.

Manuel Zebeida is the President of Press Index, a group specialized in watching media. Picanews is  its free search and alert service.

Filed under: Marketing, Technology — @ 12:38 pm on May 4, 2010
 
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Why large projects are always late?

By Marc Giget

marc-gigetMany innovative capital projects to build major new facilities and infrastructure such as cargo planes, nuclear power stations, buildings and defense systems, are currently experiencing significant fluctuations in terms of costs and performance.

Even the Olympics run vastly over budget.

So what’s happening? It seems that in the past, major projects such as these benefited from better management and planning.

These fluctuations can be attributed to four main reasons:

1. The leading edge technology used in these projects has grown vastly more complex, involving ever increasing numbers of interfaces and complicated inferences.

2. The disappearance of a clearly specified “prototype” phase. Previously, the serial production of operational systems only began after tests, trials, optimization, approval and full certification.

Using initial operational facilities as prototypes, along with supposedly money-saving concurrent engineering have instead proven extremely costly, because of the numerous modifications made during the serial production phase.

3. Lack of team continuity. The increasing mobility of young engineers makes management continuity for this type of project extremely challenging.

4. Increasingly complex regulations. Often justified by inconsistent precautionary principles, regulations from a variety of organizations have required an unprecedented flood of descriptive and compliance documentation.

Illustrating this is the Finnish EPR, whose administration costs have almost exceeded those of the nuclear reactor itself.

These difficulties come at a time when the global market of major infrastructure is shifting irreversibly towards performance based contracts, forcing designers to embrace a genuine revolution in terms of managing these complex projects.

But it’s not enough for modern collaborative design software tools to provide the solutions; the structure of partnerships also needs to be reviewed. Nowhere is this more important than when a prime – subcontractor relationship becomes a collaboration between innovation team partners working as a risk-sharing partnership.

Main contractors are to adapt in order to remain competitive and avoid the risk of colossal losses on operating agreements for several decades.

Marc Giget is the Founder and President of the European Institute for Creative Strategies and Innovation. Every year a Conference for Innovation Executives is held in Paris. The next one is on 25-26 May 2010  on The Challenge of Designing a Legend . Learn more at www.rencontre-innovation.com

Filed under: Business Development, Technology — @ 2:46 pm on April 27, 2010
 
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Conversion - Perception and Reality

By Mats Carduner

conversion-mats-gardunerAn average of 55% of people who enter a physical store will make a purchase before they walk out the door. On the web, this conversion rate drops below 2%.

Why such a gap? There is often an absence of a broad-based management sponsorship of a fact-based, data driven, testing and learning culture.

The exponential growth of Internet-users engendered a fierce race for audience. We are now entering into the conversion era where the primary goal of a website is to convert.

We define Conversion as the accomplishment of a predefined and measurable act by a user to turn your Internet properties into a genuine business driver. It includes consulting specific content, carrying out a purchase, or deepening the customer relationship.

How to increase your web site’s conversion rate:

a.  Weatherproof your web analytics: It is crucial to define goals for your web properties, and measure everything happening on your site according to what it is supposed to achieve. It is now easy and often free to implement customized web analytics to collect and aggregate the data according to your business goals.

b.  Understand the data: Information is useless if you can’t react upon it and drive tactical or strategic actions. CEOs or CMOs are often either drowned by an over-abundance of data, or simply miss the basic important indicators. View analytics in a dashboard, which can customize your incoming information to make the most relevant data the most visible and actionnable.

c.   Find what’s going wrong: By reviewing your dashboard and interpreting the metrics, you will be able to identify pain points and abandonment points on your site, which drive low conversion rate. A web analysis and usability audit will enable design, funnels, and functionalities which drive higher performance.

d.  Test, measure, implement and iterate… In today’s digital business world, every new option can be easily tested and implemented with statistically significant results. You can start humbly, do it on the go and in real time.

Under fierce competition for a user’s attention, alternate choices are only ever a click away. By listening to their users and consulting the data, companies can turn analytics into a competitive advantage.


Mats Carduner is President at fifty-five.com, a company specialized in Business Analytics.  Previously, he was Managing Director, Southern Europe at Google.

Filed under: Marketing — @ 10:01 am on March 31, 2010
 
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Find your new business model

By Mark Spelman, Accenture

marc-spelmanA combination of intensified globalization brought on by recent turbulence in the global economy and the acceleration of new information technologies is driving companies and governments to look for new business models.

Growth in size and reach of new emerging market players combined with technological advances—such as cloud computing, mobile communications and collaborative computing —are accelerating the need for companies to master new consumers, talent, innovation, capital, and resources.

The intertwining of IT with the multi-polar world has made a number of new economic relationships possible for the first time. This sets the stage for doing business in completely new ways:

1. Co-production between companies and their customers or suppliers: Companies are finding more opportunities to engage with customers and suppliers in such areas as co-producing products and sourcing ideas as a part of the innovation process.

2. New forms of B2B commerce: New forms of B2B activity are becoming technologically possible, advancing the promise of “e-markets” first discussed a decade ago.

3. Consumer-to-consumer content sharing: Technology is enabling like-minded consumers to form clusters of cooperative structures that span multiple countries and regions in order to share information, evaluate products and services and conduct purchases.

4. Peer-to-peer markets operating outside the traditional value chain: Individuals can form groups that provide products and services to reduce the market power of existing suppliers or to exert greater control over the way a product or service is produced or consumed.

5. Cooperative consumption by groups of end consumers: The growth of social networking and digitization enables consumers to form clusters that boost their bargaining power.

On top, we have found that two key capabilities help to thrive in the changed ecosystem:

  • Harnessing external networks— develop deep and wide networks with customers, entrepreneurs and other businesses.
  • Seeking data-driven insight—data collection, analytics as well as insight generation and insight application.

Responding to the newly complex and competitive ecosystem requires each business to re-evaluate the roles it has played and the sources of its value.

However, each organization has a great opportunity to harness these new market forces to its advantage to optimize, extend and transform its business models.

Mark Spelman leads Accenture’s Global Strategy practice and runs Accenture’s global macro economic and political think-tank called the Accenture Institute for High Performance.  Mark is also a regular participant to World Economic Forum at Davos.

Learn more with “From Global Connection to Global Orchestration: Future Business Models for High Performance Where Technology and the Multi-polar World Meet,” at www.accenture.com/mpw

Filed under: Business Development, The most read — @ 2:03 pm on March 23, 2010
 
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Details make the difference

with Annie Feolde

annie-feolde1The self-taught Annie Feolde started cooking dishes for the Wine Bar of Giorgio Pinchiorri, her husband. A dozen years later, she was awarded 3 Michelin Stars; one of the highest, most exclusive distinctions for a chef.

Located in a Renaissance Palace in downtown Florence, their restaurant Enoteca Pinchiorri is known worldwide for its pasta and its wines.

What is your secret for Italian Pasta?

We prepare our Pasta daily by mixing 15 egg yolks with 1 kg of flour. Then we shape different kinds of stuffed pasta such as agnolotti, cappelletti or ravioli. We also craft different lengths such as tagliatelle, tagliolini or spahetti alla chiterra.

In that case, we use a long specialized tool called a chiterra (shaped like a guitar), to cut the pasta into the right width. We also make dried Spaghetti with hard wheat flour.

In your world-class cellar, which of your 120,000 bottles are you the most proud of ?

Our first purchases are the ones we hold nearest to our hearts, like Sassicaia 1968/1985, Monfortino Barolo 1958/1971 from Italy; and Petrus 1961, Mouton Rothschild 1945 or Cheval Blanc 1947 from France.

We also have great new wines from Tuscany such as Masseto, Solaia, Redigaffi, Perca, Flaccianello and Silversmiths, and wines from the New World such as Screaming Eagle, Colgin, Maya, Harlan Estate, Dominus or Opus One.

And we can’t forget the Champagne, with the Krug Collection 1966, Krug Clos du Mesnil and Clos d’Ambonnay 1996, Dom Perignon Enoteque 1959, Cristal Rose 1996, Pommery Cuvee Louise 1996 or Salon 1990.

Can Glasses really make a big difference in the taste of the wine ?

Oh yes… At Enoteca Pinchiorri, we offer over 40 types of crystal glasses. There are glasses for Champagne, white wines, young red and ripe, sweet wines…. For every type of wine, we can say there is a glass to showcase it perfectly.

When a customer selects a really special bottle of wine, we will choose the most beautiful, elegant shape to give the customer the most pleasure and ensure that the selected vintage will taste the best. As a restaurant, we do not produce wine but we enhance the taste with our service.

Can you say a word about yourself ?

My passion has always been to make others happy. My husband and I share the same passion for quality. Our pleasure is to help our customers to rediscover traditional, often forgotten products and recipes such as oven-roasted pig, with its crisp skin, potato salad, beet oil, and sweet-sour shallots.

Annie Feold is one of the Grand Chefs at Relais & Châteaux, a family of 480 prestigious hotels and restaurants in 56 countries. With her husband, she owns Restaurant Enoteca Pinchiorri, one of the most celebrated restaurants in Italy.

Filed under: Chef's words, Wine list — @ 8:08 pm on March 11, 2010
 
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Avenues for CEOs in Transition

Joshua Hittman, Gerson Lehrman Group

ceos-in-transitionFor C-suite executives, leaving the corner office doesn’t mean leaving the field—there are many ways to remain professionally engaged and involved.

Whether former CEOs are in transition toward another full-time post or settling in to full-time consulting, they have resources that allow them to leverage their decades of experience across a global client base.

Despite the current poor job market, there will always be demand for the right kind of knowledge and experience.

Many CEOs keep themselves current, involved and remunerated through expert networks such as Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG).

GLG connects CEOs with clients, as part of our mission to help leading business decision makers find, engage, and manage subject matter experts across a broad range of industries and disciplines. We work closely with our senior investment and corporate clients to match them with the expertise they need most.

Our 250,000+ experts worldwide include thousands of former CEOs, across industries and geographies, whom we recruit through a combination of referrals and our own industry knowledge. We also ensure the highest standards of ethics and have built an industry-leading compliance framework for expert consulting.

Relying on personal and professional connections is the tried and true solution, but in today’s online, intensely networked age, former CEOs can do far more to keep themselves in the mix.

They can join a diverse and highly specialized group of experts who are consulted by corporations and financial institutions worldwide for everything from a brief conference call on a specific issue to a long-term engagement.

Consulting via an expert network can bridge the gap between one senior executive role and the next—or it can evolve into a solution in and of itself. Former CEOs have a wider range of choices than they realize, and those choices may become solutions for investors and others in search of informed insight.

Staying fresh, informed and smart in your field is crucial in today’s challenging job market. While that’s always the case for any job candidate, it’s essential for former C-suite executives in this increasingly competitive environment.

Joshua Hittman, is Vice President EMEA of Gerson Lehrman Group, the global marketplace for expertise. Its 19 offices are located in North America, Asia, Europe, and South America.  Learn more about becoming a GLG Council Member.

Filed under: Manage change, The most read — @ 12:15 pm on February 9, 2010
 
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Diving into Dark Pools

By Antoine Juaristi, Lovells

13-jan-antoine-juaristiThe recent financial crisis has brought to light the complexity of certain financial products, as well as a profound lack of transparency within the financial system. Despite strong criticism denouncing this lack of transparency, investors have, nevertheless, increasingly had recourse to hidden trading platforms on the equity market, better known as dark pools.

By way of clarification, let us dive into the world of dark pools! The EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, MIFID, came into force two years ago. It allowed for the opening up of new trading systems, particularly in the equities market.

In order to ensure market transparency and integrity, this Directive set up pre-trade and post-trade transparency requirements. For example, the directive’s pre-trade transparency requirements include the obligation to make public on a continuous basis current bid and offer prices and the depth of trading interests at these prices during a continuous basis during trading hours.

This EU directive also allows for the waiver of these obligations for transactions that are large in scale compared to normal market size. The aim is to prevent the acquisition or transfer of a large number of shares from triggering a large increase or decrease in share prices if this order were made public. This has spurred the development of dark pools for block trades.

Dark Pools thus refers to trading systems operating without pre-trade transparency using the waivers provided for in the MIFID. They currently represent less than 10% of trade volume on the European equity shares market.

The most well-known dark pools include: Smart Pool founded by NYSE Euronext, Baïkal founded by the London stock exchange (which recently merged with the alternative European platform Turquoise, founded by BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale and UBS) or Neuro Dark founded by Nasdaq OMX.

Although post-trade transparency requirements apply to dark pools (in particular the obligation to make public the price, volume and time of transactions), they are criticized for their lack of pre-trade transparency. Some investors could sell large quantities of shares within a regulated market after purchasing these same shares at a much lower price from a dark pool.

Beyond the risk of price manipulation, the rise of dark pools might also distort competition and create a disadvantage for private investors who do not trade in large quantities of shares and who cannot have recourse to dark pools. This highlights the risk of liquidity fragmentation and, as a consequence, a possible deterioration of the price formation process on the equities market.

Due to the multiplication of shares trading systems, equity issuers complain when the price of their shares is altered. Since they don’t know the exact stock exchange price of their shares, they can’t determine the actual price of their financial capitalization.

In the US, dark pools emerged in the 1990s. In October 2009, because of the growing number of those hidden platforms, the Stock Exchange Commission proposed measures intended to increase transparency of dark pools in the United States, so investors get a clearer view of stock prices and liquidity.

Did MIFID really achieve its aim of protecting investors through setting up a more integrated, transparent, effective and competitive capital market? The European Commission has scheduled a revision of MIFID for 2010, which we hope will provide an opportunity for the pre-negotiation transparency waivers to be rethought in order to prevent the development of this dark side of the financial markets.

Antoine Juaristi is Partner at Lovells, in the Dispute Resolution Group. Lovells is one of the largest international law firms with offices in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Filed under: Finance, Legal — @ 12:37 pm on January 16, 2010
 
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Learn to be creative

With Pedro Subijana

4-dec-pedro-subijanaYou often talk about the wisdom of the ancients, how would you define it ?

As for any art or job, you first need to know the basics and to build solid foundations through academic training. Then, as you get more knowledge and practice, you get the freedom to create and to innovate.  Mixing generations in my teams and in my courses has always been stimulating for everyone including myself.

Tell us about you ?

After studying in Spain, I set up my own restaurant in 1975 in San Sebastian, my native town, in the Basque region. We are located the Igueldo Mount above the Atlantic sea. Our ambition is to be one of the hubs of creative cuisine. I also love to share my cooking secrets.

How do you teach your art ?

I have been teaching cooking on TV everyday for 15 years at Tele5 and at Etb2. It was a great way to meet and teach students every day in the intimacy of each home thanks to the massive mail contacts we had. Now, I am more inclined to give classes at my own restaurant or in schools to the younger generation of people. I wrote a dozen books. As they are all out of print, I am now preparing the next one.

Spain produces outstanding wines. What do you recommend ?

I love wines in all the price ranges. Here are some of my preferred red wines : San Vincente 2005 or Las Gravas 2006 about 20 € ; I appreciate a lot the Finca El Bosque 2007 or the Finca Dofi 2005 around 100 € ; then you can find ultimate wines such as Pesus 2004 or La Faraona 2005 for about 250 €.

Which of your many distinctions you are the most proud of ?

For any chef, the Michelin macarons are among the most prestigious distinction you can get. Each year, you also have to be good enough to keep them. We have got our third Michelin Star in 2007. This has been great recognition for the whole team.

Pedro Subijana is one of the Grand Chefs at Relais & Châteaux, a family of 480 prestigious hotels and restaurants in 56 countries. He is also the founder and the owner of Alekare, a 3-Star Michelin Restaurant located in Spain. He is teaching cooking all over the world and advises several hotel groups.

Filed under: Chef's words, Wine list — @ 6:02 pm on December 9, 2009
 
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Extending professional life

By Marie-Charlotte Diriart

3-dec-marie-charlotte-driart3Extending seniors’ employability is currently a hot topic for most European countries. European countries are recognizing the value that older workers bring to an organization: experience, institutional memory, wisdom, maturity. In 2010, each member of the European Union must achieve the target of increasing its employment rate of seniors (aged between 55 and 64 years old) to 50%.

In 2008, the average rate of senior employment in Europe was 46%, which is the rate recorded for Spain. Above this average are The Netherlands (53%), Germany (54%) and The United Kingdom (58%). They are finding it difficult to keep up with the lead taken by the top of the class: Sweden, with 70 % of seniors in employment. Amongst the worst performing are France (38%), Italy (34%) and Poland (32%) who are now striving to reach the 50% target.

The way to avoid encourage seniors to delay entry into retirement differs from country to country. Some governments try to increase the age of retirement (Finland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Germany), while others create incentive measures to hire or maintain senior employment by exempting social security contributions (Italy, Spain). Sweden pays subsidies to companies hiring senior employees, and Finland and the UK promote the positive impact of employing seniors via public campaigns.

Whereas the current economic and financial climate obliges most companies to implement constraints or voluntary departure plans for a large number of employees, French companies have to commit to maintaining or hiring senior employees.

The approach taken by France to reduce this gap is worth focusing on since the French model is distinctly punitive, as opposed to offering incentives. Companies having more than 50 employees are required to take certain number of quantifiable measures which favor senior employment. These companies will be sanctioned with a penalty of 1% of the global gross salaries if they do not comply with these regulations as of January 1st 2010.

In Sweden, all the economic players are fully aware of the challenge. To respond to their ageing workforce, companies are encouraged to take creative measures. Like Vatenfall this publicly owned energy company, which in order to avoid terminating more than 8 000 of its senior employees in 10 years time, has established the “80-90-100″ program: 80% work time provides 90% salary and 100% pension funding.  Other companies such as SwedBank, a leading bank in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have taken similar initiatives.

Different countries have vastly different approaches to attracting and retaining seniors, but it is clear that the initiative is taking hold, and one way or another it will be here for some time.

Marie-Charlotte Diriart is Counsel on Employment at Lovells. Lovells is one of the largest international legal practices with offices in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Filed under: Human Resources, Legal — @ 1:23 pm on December 8, 2009
 
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