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About This Blog Updated daily by members of the Business Finance Expert Network, The Big Fat Finance Blog is intended to arm finance professionals with innovative ideas and best practices that help finance organizations create value.
In a recent post, I shared some suggestions from Jeff Moore, director of complex property tax with Thomson Reuters Tax and Accounting, about the steps tax directors should be taking right now to influence their organization’s property tax liability. Moore very kindly followed up with these additional action steps, which read almost like a Top 10 best practices list for effective corporate property tax management: more
“Our sales offshore are more than 80 percent of our revenue today. It’s amazing. We talk a lot about how Amway became an $8.5 billion global company when people weren’t looking.” – Amway CFO Russ Evans
I couldn’t help but think that the above quote is revealing in the sense that even today, with our globally-minded workforce, people tend to pay closer attention to businesses when they’re local. However, in the case of Amway, what was local now resides largely in the past.
The company widely known for its direct-selling, or multilevel marketing, model was first founded in 1959. It reportedly first moved offshore to Australia in 1971 and then to Europe in 1973. However, its latest offshore chapter and the one that has been largely authored when “people weren’t looking” begins with its move into China in 1995. Today, China is the company’s largest market, generating about 60 percent of its overall revenue. more
A pair of recent surveys by Adaptive Planning, in conjunction with the BPM Forum, suggests more than half of financial executives are bracing for another downturn, a double dip recession. The first survey from February shows 51 percent expecting a W-shaped (double dip) recovery. For 67 percent, any meaningful improvement in jobs won’t happen until 2011.
The second survey, conducted a few months later, showed similar results, which suggests that the economy has stabilized. “People expected improvement, but clearly it is not happening as fast as they hoped,” commented Bill Soward, Adaptive Planning CEO.
The latest bouncing around of the major stock indices considerably below their highs for the year, along with European debt problems and the Gulf oil disaster, only add to the gloom. Still, Soward suggests that there are steps financial managers should take to navigate this bumpiness. more
How would you rate your organization’s performance in dealing with its sales-and-use tax obligations — best-in-class, industry average, or laggard? If you’re not sure, or you suspect you’re in that last category, you might want to take a look at a new report from Aberdeen Group that sets out to isolate the factors that distinguish the top performers from the so-so operations as well as from, let’s say, the seriously sales-and-use-tax challenged. more
To what extent does risk management need to be better aligned with internal control?
That’s the essential question within a new survey you can complete in 15 to 20 minutes.
The survey represents a joint effort among The Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Committee of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO).
The objectives of the research are threefold:
• Investigate how risk management and internal control frameworks, standards, and/or guidance are being used around the globe;
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of existing risk management and internal control systems; and
• Determine the need for international alignment among the various national frameworks, standards, and guidance that already exist in this area. ###
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