Leave it to an engineer to crystallize one of the toughest challenges companies face after putting in place an enterprise risk management (ERM) approach.

“Any system that is set in motion requires some energy to keep going,” notes Trinidad and Tobago-based Phoenix Park Gas Processors Limited (PPGPL) President Eugene Tiah (a former engineer who also earned his MBA). “For this reason, we are committed to sustaining our effort and continually improving our ERM capabilities over time.”

Tiah and Dominic Rampersad, Phoenix Park vice president of finance and information technology (IT), spoke to me at length last month about their ERM journey. The results of these conversations and other research can be found in this case study.

I’ll include more information about Phoenix Park’s impressive effort in future posts.

The company – which employs approximately 180 people, posts annual revenue of about $700 million and is jointly owned by NGC NGL Company Limited, ConocoPhillips Inc., and a GE Energy Financial Services company (10 percent) – undertook a formal ERM effort in 2008 to achieve three objectives. more

How Budgeting is Evolving

It was little more than a year ago when we surveyed Business Finance readers on their budgeting practices. We were surprised to learn that 28 percent of finance executives viewed their 2009 budget targets as having become obsolete before the year had even begun. Meanwhile, two out of three expected their 2009 budgets to be obsolete within the first 6 months of the year.

In the face of such incriminating data, we decided that it was time to write an obituary for that cumbersome business process. more

A recent piece from Jake Swearington cites a survey of 1,600 executives by William Baker, a professor of marketing at San Diego State University, which found that those firms that rely heavily on external social networks scored 24 percent higher on a measure of radical innovation than companies that don’t.

Late in January, wiredFINANCE looked at the suggestion that social networking for business is “cr*p” and found that there actually can be something of value for business in social networking. Months earlier, wiredFINANCE found that budgeting and any collaborative financial process, such as accounts receivable, could benefit from social networking.

Even my colleagues at Business Finance Magazine have recently created a Linked-in page and a Twitter page. What’s more, BF’s editor in chief Jack Sweeney and managing editor John Cummings have begun tweeting daily. Clearly, Social media/networking also can do good things for the business itself. more

Would you rat on your company to the IRS for a share of the proceeds?

Many would, apparently. more

Management teams that are on the prowl for acquisitions may find themselves doing some treasure hunting. That’s because they likely will find a growing amount of opportunity in distressed assets, or the debt or equity of a company that has declared bankruptcy or is restructuring itself. That was one of the points that was made clear during a webcast hosted by Ernst & Young last week, titled, appropriately enough, “Buying Distressed Assets.”

After all, business bankruptcy filings more than doubled between 2006 and 2008, jumping from 19,695 to 43,546, reports the research group American Bankruptcy Institute. Filings in the third quarter of 2009 (the latest data available), at 15,177, were nearly three times those of the third quarter of 2006.

Similarly, the number of mass layoffs – a rough proxy for corporate restructurings – jumped from 938 for the month of February 2006 to 1,761 in January 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. more