Blog library

No matter what they make or sell — computers, pet food, cosmetics, textiles — companies around the world are grappling with significant supply chain issues. It’s easy to blame the global health crisis for these problems, especially the labor, material and shipping container shortages. Certainly, the pandemic has played its part in exposing the global supply chain’s brittleness and exacerbating systemic problems. But…

The internal audit function is the only function within any organisation which has the mandate to look across and examine all aspects of the businesses and its processes. It’s a very empowering position and it’s also very unique and compelling as a profession.  An internal auditor can gain insights into an organisation with a holistic view. The internal audit process requires one to assess the challenges for the…

On the three-dimensional chessboard of business, CFOs are expanding their roles in multiple directions at once. Finance leaders now shape and drive corporate strategy in areas ranging from advanced technology investments to organisational design, and from supply chain resilience to organisational culture. Simply stated, they are positioning themselves as players in the strategic dialogue in the C-suite and boardroom…

Businesses are experiencing increased agility and reliability – and cost reductions – through cloud transformation but adopting cloud solutions can result in new risks. Sometimes, they impede enterprise vision and regulatory compliance. Applying an appropriate framework to help manage the risk of cloud adoption can mitigate or even eliminate these hazards. In an earlier blog, we introduced the cloud control…

I’m a professional hacker, or as we are referred to in the security industry, a penetration tester. As a penetration tester, I am hired by organisations to attack their systems, networks, applications, and employees in the same fashion that a malicious attacker would. It is my job to find and exploit weaknesses before malicious attackers can. These weaknesses include application and network-based attacks (exploiting…

The response to the pandemic from organisations can be classified into multiple phases. In the first phase, business leaders scrambled to equip teams for remote work. Later, ad hoc groups sprang up to devise return-to-office (RTO) plans. Soon after, many recognised they’d have to optimise tools and processes for remote collaboration that would last months longer than they had anticipated. And now, business leaders…

Stakeholders have long believed that effective assessments of a company’s performance and prospects require solid information on workforce costs and productivity, on how employees are hired, developed and managed, and other human capital factors. Agencies, governing bodies and investors have recently exerted pressure on a number of authorities worldwide to ensure more human capital information is made available as a…

The COVID-19 pandemic. A new administration in the U.S. with, so far, a markedly different tone than the previous one. The MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting. It would be easy to attribute the emergence of human capital reporting requirement by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to a wave of accountability demands in a world rife with change. But…

The Digital Age is forcing businesses to seek new ways to avoid falling behind and better serve their customers. Business agility enables organisations to respond quickly to market changes and employee or customer demands without compromising quality. Traditional hierarchical siloed methods no longer work in this environment. Companies seeking speed, innovation and greater customer focus have prioritised working in…

In a culture of abundance, scarcity is often equated with adversity. But abundance can be a burden as well, leaving otherwise healthy companies unprepared to deal with extended periods of lack of resources. The global COVID-19 pandemic provided a wake-up call for many organisations in developed economies as they found themselves scrambling to adapt to resource constraints that are a way of life for companies in…