Compensation is shaping up as one of the top corporate risk management issues for 2012.

From a compliance standpoint, companies will need to adhere to Dodd-Frank – which certainly is no small task. Sarbanes-Oxley required the government and SEC to adopt 16 new regulations, notes Carol Beaumier, a Protiviti executive vice president, while Dodd-Frank calls for as many as 300 new regulations.

From a human capital standpoint, major overhauls to compensation strategies and programs – driven by new regulations and, more important, the strategic makeovers companies performed in response to the historic recession – will require scrutiny from a risk management perspective. more

BusinessWeek magazine is suddenly bullish on smartphone apps for business. That wasn’t always the case. In 2009, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Gene Marks wrote: I won’t be implementing a mobile solution for my business. And if you’re a small-business owner, neither should you.

But things can change fast in the technology industry, especially when it comes to smartphones. So what may have been good advice a year and a half ago is outdated today. Now IBM is implementing an internal app store for its employees with smartphones who, reportedly, can do everything from scheduling conference rooms to approving purchase orders.

Other large and technically savvy companies are likely to follow IBM’s lead. The technology for setting up an app store is not much different from setting up any other transaction website. Much trickier, however, is determining the right apps. Here are some suggested apps for finance. more