According to Basel II, operational risk is the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes people and systems, or from external events. That’s a pretty broad definition, and one that reaches into every corporate function, including sales and marketing.

Sales and marketing executives and outside experts are very excited these days about a new concept called revenue performance management (RPM).

RPM is sort of the business performance management equivalent for the sales and marketing functions. Until recently, a more fitting description of the relationship between these two functions would have been sales vs. marketing. And while the emergence of RPM should excite CFOs and risk managers, the need for it also points to fairly common operational risks that involve sales and marketing processes and people. more

Five years ago, I wrote a 30-page Management Accounting Guideline on business continuity management (BCM) best practices for CMA (this article is pulled from the longer report).

Since then, I’ve always remained alert to BCM news, trends, and developments, such as pandemic planning.

Since I hadn’t seen any major BCM news or breakthroughs in several weeks, I checked in with Brian Kinman, a PricewaterhouseCoopers partner who leads his firm’s enterprise risk management (ERM) practice. more

Do you ever have difficulty getting rid of a business book?

I need to “spring-clean” my shelves every few months or I risk drowning in print thanks to the generous publicists at Harvard Business School Press, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, Penguin and other fine publishing houses. These folks still help expand my business intelligence by sending me review copies (despite my pleas for them to cut their clients’ marketing costs by instead zipping “e-review” copies via Kindle ).

For some reason, a book I only periodically scan for ideas, David Apgar’s “Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don’t Know” (Harvard Business School Press, 2006), has eluded my book-donation trips to the awesome Yarborough Public Library for five-plus years. more

As more companies conduct global business, the need to monitor global risks rises.

Aon’s 2011 Terrorism and Political Violence Map shows:

• Increased risk of political violence in the Middle East and North Africa;

• Ongoing terrorism risks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia as well as parts of Nigeria and the Sahel region; and

• A growing likelihood of civil unrest and labor disputes arising from austerity measures in Western European nations such as Greece, France, Spain and the UK. more

Last month, I asked you if brand and reputational risk qualifies as a top strategic concern. A new survey suggests that it sure does.

A new survey from EisnerAmper, the country’s 15th largest public accounting firm, finds that reputational risks qualify as a top board concern. The survey polled 140 board members from public and private companies (31 percent of respondents serve on audit committees).

Other than financial risk, respondents were asked to identify risks of most concern; 69 percent identified reputational risk as their primary concern. Regulatory and compliance risk, which topped last year’s survey, was a close second at 61 percent. These concerns were followed by CEO Succession Planning at 55 percent and IT Risk at 51 percent. more