This CGMA survey report explores the importance placed on business ethics, ethical performance and ethical management within organisations, and the specific role played and challenges faced by individual chartered global management accountants (CGMAs).

Risk management is an irreplaceable part of any enterprise in order to run every business project more effectively, safely as well as less costly. However, not all project managers have enough time, effort and teams to identify the risk correctly and take action ontime to prevent the risks to become real problems. In the last post, we discussed about the first 5 golden rules of project risk management. Today, we're going through the remaining 5 rules in risk management:

Ever since the economy crisis in 2008 – 2009, organisations have to face with a lot of changes in order to adapt with the fluctuated environment as well as to ensure their survivals in the competitive market. Recent survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in March 2013 has found out that firms are slowing down their recovering process and paying more attention to risk management (Apostolik, R, 2013).

As a result, effective and accurate risk alignment will help minimise the impact of threats, maintain project’s timeliness as well as keep the actual costs on track with the budget. Here are 10 golden rules to help managers to manage project risks effectively.

In the previous post, we have touched upon the current issues with annual reports in Vietnam. The financial review in an annual report, including financial statements and footnotes, is of particular interest to investors. Nonetheless, there are differences between the way this section is approached in Vietnam and in Western countries such as the US and UK due to legal, social, cultural and political dissimilarities.

Annual report – As sad as it may seem, the concept of preparing/using the document is still a grey area in Vietnam. According to the Ministry of Finance, to date there are 1,690 public companies in Vietnam, 704 of which are listed in 2 stock markets. However, in 2011, only 21 out of 695 listed companies sufficiently met mandatory regulations regarding information disclosure.

Research shows that globalisation trend is growing. With all the technologies, internet and the vehicles they empower from e-commerce to social media, the world continues to be smaller since information now is more accessible, and business opportunities follow it become broader to catch.

In the previous posts of this “Managing your business in a volatile climate” blog series, we discussed about a renewed focus on risk management, business forecasting and new technologies that businesses can leverage to stay competitive in a volatile market. In this articles, the last post of this series, we will discuss about improvement of businesses responsiveness to volatility by capitalising on core processes and technology investment.

In our last post on how to manage your business in a volatile climate, we mentioned that organisations can focus on measuring the right things, forecasting accurately and managing risks to its advantage and achieve their goals. In this articles, the second post of the series “Managing your business in a volatile climate”, we will discuss how new technologies can help businesses maintain their competitive advantages.

“The only predictable thing about life is its unpredictability” – Unknown

In the last decade, so many events had happened that brought unbridled change and volatility to the world’s economy. Business have been facing wildly fluctuating rates of decline and recovery across the globe. A “Growth markets forecast” done by Ernst & Young in 2013 has pointed out that insolvencies rose by 178% during 2008-9 recession in the US versus a 57% rose in the UK. Fortunately, during the past years, insolvencies has dropped fast and the rate in the US is falling 20% faster than that of in the UK. In addition to these changes and volatility, over-regulation, constant imposition from regulators and global standard-setters have brought complication and complexity to the systems and information that organisations need. This leads to the need to absorb and synthesise information so to manage risk more effectively. So, how companies should respond to volatility and what they need to do to enhance their competitiveness, financial performance, productivity in a volatile business climate?

Cash flow management is one of the most important tasks to any CFOs. Cash is the blood of any entity. Having good cash flow management not only guarantees the health of your business but also forms a strong foundation to launch your business to a new height.