There’s no such thing as a free lunch. For trade compliance managers, there’s no such thing as a truly free trade, either. In the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the greatest cost comes in maintaining records showing that products qualify for NAFTA’s preferential tariff treatment. Compliance is enforced by the customs services […]
Carlson Caron
Posted inInternal Controls
Managing Your Process Improvement Efforts
At the Alcon Manufacturing Ltd. plant in Sinking Spring, Pa., process improvement is led by the quality assurance division. At Command Medical Products in Ormand Beach, Fla., the same chore is overseen by the vice president of operations. At other companies, management might try to involve anyone and everyone, down to the shop floor. Process […]
Posted inInternal Controls
The Dell Restatement: Lessons to Remember
Any financial reporting enthusiasts looking for some scary reading should try the 8-K report Dell Inc. filed on Aug. 16. The tale is more than 3,900 words of accounting failure, that apparently started with poor internal controls and will reach its conclusion sometime later this year, when Dell restates more than four years’ worth of […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Hedging Against the Untimely Exit of CEOs
Call it heart attack risk: the abrupt, untimely departure of a chief executive officer—which, really, can leave any number of people experiencing chest pains. Some CEOs might be whisked off to prison, such as Bernie Ebbers from WorldCom or Dennis Kozlowski from Tyco. Others might need to be dumped unceremoniously before a shareholder rebellion (think […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Measuring Non-Financial, Intangible Risks
Much like the homeland security chief’s latest “gut feeling” about an increased risk of a terrorist attack in the United States this summer, some risks facing businesses today can be hard to pinpoint and even harder to quantify. While enterprise risk management attempts to identify and measure the totality of a company’s risks, considerable ambiguity […]
Posted inInternal Controls
HIPAA Inspections Underscore IT Controls
Until now, the data security provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act received scant attention from regulators, particularly compared to enforcement activity for other federal information security mandates like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. That is beginning to change, as federal regulators complete their first HIPAA security audit and prepare to […]