One of the major issues IT executives face is how to charge their departmental costs back to each part of the business according to their usage. It’s a touchy issue that can be the source of end-user disenchantment with the performance and contribution of the IT organization. Ultimately, charge-back friction can hobble IT’s ability to make necessary investments in new capabilities and become the primary cause of misallocated IT spending. The two risks are related: Unless an IT department can calculate the real costs of the services it provides to specific parts of the business and charge for them accordingly, it is almost impossible for line-of-business department managers to assign priorities to the “keep the lights on” part of the budget, so even low-priority maintenance or upgrade efforts can crowd out all but the most pressing needs. The issue of allocating IT department costs spills over to Finance, which typically handles the allocations in budgeting and profit calculations. As a first step toward establishing an effective means of funding the IT function, I believe the finance department must establish better methods of allocating IT costs. Eventually the proper allocation of IT costs also becomes an issue for senior corporate executives as well because it has a direct impact on how effectively a company uses information technology. more

When practitioners, consultants and academics discuss leading organizational risk management practices, they hone in on people, processes and supporting technology. As major risk management failures in recent years have illustrated, mastering these three dimensions is necessary but not sufficient.

Effective enterprise risk management (ERM) — or any discreet risk management process — hinges on other dimensions as well, including organizational culture, behavior, ethics and change management … all the squishy, human stuff that defies convenient categorization in COSO cubes and other traditional risk management frameworks. more

Currently, the IRS often ends up auditing tax returns months — in some cases, years — after they’ve been filed. While no reasonable person would claim that audits are enjoyable in the first place, having such a gap between the date of the return and the start of an audit can make the process even more difficult.

Doug Shulman, IRS Commissioner, has talked about the difficulties the current system presents, and his goal of changing the system so that examinations occur nearer to the time when the returns are filed. Speaking in April 2011 before the National Press Club, Commissioner Shulman said, “This after-the-fact compliance approach can create problems and frustrations for both taxpayers and the IRS. It can be a real dilemma for taxpayers, who may no longer have the money that was refunded to them, but it turns out, they were not entitled to. There’s also possible sticker shock because interest and perhaps penalties may have been accruing on any tax due for up to three years. Taxpayers ask, ‘Why didn’t you notify me earlier?’ This hurts the IRS’ image and contributes to a “gotcha” perception.” more

After decades of badgering companies to backup their data, many organizations are still only just joining the backup bandwagon. They do it mainly because the auditors or regulators put a gun to their heads.

Over the years, backup and recovery has gotten much simpler and faster due to disk-to-disk (D2D) backup. And continuously falling disk prices combined with deduplication and compression technology has made D2D backup even cheaper.

Now with the advent of backup services readily available in the cloud, yet another backup option is available. A report by Asigra, cloud backup-recovery-restore player, answers commonly asked questions about cloud backup. more

As just about anyone with even a passing interest in economic news is aware, most of the growth across the world’s economies is occurring in emerging markets. While the World Bank expects the U.S. to grow at between two and three percent over the next few years, and Europe at less than two percent, it is forecasting growth of just under nine percent in China, five-plus percent in Turkey and about four percent in Mexico.

Companies that want to take advantage of the growth opportunities in these markets often turn to mergers or acquisitions, given that this usually is faster than trying to build operations from the ground up when working across national borders. In fact, a recent survey of M&A professionals by mergermarket and IntraLinks found that most expect cross-border M&A deals involving companies in emerging markets to outpace activity in the developed markets over the next 12 months. Nearly three-quarters of respondents expect cross-border M&A activity to increase in emerging markets, while just 50 percent predict an increase in developed countries. more