Get the most from Notes®

Some of you may have seen the recent news about IT Factory and their financial problems after filing for insolvency protection. (For those of you who may not know, IT Factory used to be very much involved in the Lotus Notes tools market, but had recently moved into customer relationship management, human resource management, online procurement and office automation applications. The really sad part of this whole thing is that the cause appears to be a CEO who ran a scam where non-existing IT equipment was sold to leasing firms, and the cash was sent off to some “offshore” companies. (The CEO is reportedly wanted by Interpol and is nowhere to be found!)

In spite of the fact that KPMG has been their auditor for some time, the activities of the CEO were hidden from them … up to this point any way. Bo H. Eriksen in his blog points out that auditing firms provide a needed service, but usually identify problems after the fact. In order to get in front of these sorts of issues, Bo argues for greater transparency. After all, this is a big part of what governance is all about.

However it’s more than just implementing transparency and control. Control without an understanding of the business doesn’t really help all that much. Understanding the business is also required in order to identify any irregularities that are taking place. It’s hard to argue that getting employees to understand their respective businesses better is a good thing.

The bottom line is that better control (aka: governance) with a greater understanding of the business can only help the business be better managed. With better management comes (presumably) a more successful business. At the end of the day, that’s what we all want, don’t we?