Many thanks to OpenPages Vice President of Marketing Gordon Burnes, who carved out time in recent weeks to chat about risk management with me via e-mail.

Our conversation took time to get rolling, with Burnes seeing to business in Brazil and my own Big Bend National Park interruption (Viva Terlingua!). Now that I’ve dried off from a dip in the Rio and survived the attention of a curious javelina, I’m ready to share the first portion of our exchange.

This part of our discussion touches upon risk management’s role as a strategic differentiator, Toyota’s blind spot, and the greening of risk maps… more

I am writing this blog form Jackson, Wyo., in the shadows of the Grand Tetons, where I have enjoyed an excellent Spring Break trip with my family. The beauty of the mountains and the wildlife (elk, moose, Canadian geese, and dozens more) gave me time and space to reflect.

It wasn’t all fun, however … as we took our kids skiing (for some of us, the outing marked the first time on the big mountains). It had been over 20 years since I had tried to ski. My wife said it would be like riding a bicycle – “You’ll pick it back up instantly.” I never remember being that terrified when riding a bike.

We spent most of the first day with a patient instructor who walked us through a series of baby steps, each instruction building on the one he presented previously. By the end of the day, those baby steps made us confident enough to try the big slope on our own. more

I’m not big on spring-cleaning — the thought usually fills me with a certain dread and a sudden impulse to take a stroll to the nearest pub — but I have to admit I was inspired by Chris McKittrick’s enthusiastic post to this blog on Tuesday in which he waxed lyrical about the joys of spring and … records retention.

Yes, records retention. While you’re unwinding and tidying up after the annual audit cycle, says Chris, you want to make sure you don’t lose track of key documents that you might need down the line. “The road is littered with the cases of businesses that lacked good processes for managing the retention of their documents and electronic records, which ended up costing them in later lawsuits or other legal proceedings,” he writes.

Tax pros know that those words apply in double strength to their department, where a single misplaced document — an exemption certificate, for example — can result in penalties to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. You would think that any proven technology that can increase the accessibility and availability of tax data would be a no-brainer investment. The fact is, though, that document management systems are still comparative rarities in the tax function. more