FAQ

We are St. Louis-based consultants specializing in helping organizations to reduce both costs and risk by improving business controls. We have collective experience teaching business controls in 27 countries with students from 65 countries in a variety of industries, have conducted thousands of seminars and workshops, and have provided organizational development and process improvement consulting for hundreds of clients.

(1) The first need is management certification of financial reports. The best line of personal and organizational protection is to create an active defense. That requires a best practices process which makes certain that everything possible is being done to ensure business control is in place.

(2) The second need is to continue lowering organizational costs and improving the bottom line. Shortcomings in business controls result in a failure to:

• Recognize risks and protect assets
• Seize opportunities to reduce costs
• Proactively prevent avoidable human and process error
• Lower expenses and increase profits

In today’s environment, improving business controls is the fastest way to lower costs and improve bottom line profit.

BizControl Solutions research has identified six “Out-of-Control Incubators” along with a set of common business "trigger events" that are leading indicators of control problems. These are present in nearly every organization.

BizControl Solutions research shows that a best practices business control function  has the following characteristics:

• The organization has established a culture of control and has institutionalized it. There is no question that the organization “really means it” and that this is not a passing management fad.
• There is follow-through and support for business controls from top management through to the front-line. 
• “Business control” is a new core competency. It is included in competency models, performance plans, and appraisals. It is also supported through training, coaching, and formal communications.
• There is a dedicated business controls function. In smaller organizations, this might consist of the top management team meeting in special sessions and the methodology incorporated with the decision-making process. In a large organization, this is a permanent position leading a cross-functional team addressing business control issues on a proactive basis throughout the entire collaborative enterprise.
• There is a certification process in place to insure that all managers and supervisors have been trained in business controls, and annually confirm in writing that they follow appropriate control practices.
• Control issues are formally communicated throughout the organization in a candid fashion. 

Organization-wide learning takes place both from successes and from problems resolved.

Falling short of these best practices typically results in not obtaining the maximum available savings from the business controls improvement effort and in increasing risks from out-of-control processes.

There is a major disconnect between organizational business control needs and leadership competence in this area. Most managers have not had any comprehensive business controls training. It’s not listed on any organizational value statements, leadership competency models, performance plans, or appraisals. It is not a standard part of decision-making processes or investment analyses. Business controls is a new managerial and supervisory “core competency” for the entire organization.

Financial controls are actually a subset of total controls. Business controls refer to the entire range  of control processes and elements, not only within the individual organization but throughout the entire relational enterprise. This goes far beyond the traditional accounting and financial audit functions. Keep in mind, all the organizations that experienced control problems passed their internal and external audits.

As business operations and relationships become more complex, it's nearly impossible to assess an organization from the inside. The finance department exists in one of the organizational silos. In addition, inside auditors look at financial performance in a reactive fashion, and are encumbered by internal politics and their own interdepartmental relationships.

Obtaining these services from external auditors presents a conflict of interest situation. These auditors are influenced by the existing auditing relationship, and are being called upon to review processes that may have already passed previous audits. For this reason, recent legislation limits obtaining certain consulting services from outside auditors. 

Finally, these three organizations do not focus on business controls as a research or practice specialty. If they did or could, best practices would already be in place.

Assistance with this effort should be provided by an external organization specializing in business controls. Advantages of this approach are:

• It is a specialty, the focus of the advisor’s research and practice expertise.
• The organization is independent—outside the organization’s politics.
• There is no other consulting relationship to bias the evaluation and results.
• A full range of project leadership, assessment, and training services are available.

This provides a comprehensive, leading edge, independent, and effective solution for the organization.