Advanced Topics

•  Best Practices
•  Measuring against Competition
•  Governance

Best Practices

Best Practices and Benchmarking
This PriceWaterhouseCoopers' site suggests a comprehensive approach to managing a business, looking at both the functional and managerial axes of management. It also includes sophisticated benchmarking tests on every aspect of the process. Access to the detailed information requires a small fee.

Measuring against the Competition

Businesses use benchmarking as a method of comparison against some standard of excellence. Benchmarking generally refers to the process of comparing and measuring your organization against others to address possible deficiencies and gain information that will help you take action to improve your organization's performance.

Performance Plus
This site offers a comprehensive service that calculates all your key financial ratios and compares them with other firms in your industry (based on StatsCan data). To get the full benefit, you should enter all your firm's financial data.

Governance

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) has assembled comprehensive information and guidance on the requirements for boards of directors in meeting their responsibilities to represent the interests of shareholders of public companies, including governance, transparency and disclosure. The information provided by the Institute is aimed primarily at public companies, but the practices outlined in this guidance are a model for private companies as well.

Corporate Governance — CICA
20 questions from the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants on each of the major issues in governance — pensions, financial planning, management's discussion and analysis in annual reports, executive compensation, risk, strategy and information technology.

Articles on Governance and Risk Management — CICA
A list of more than 50 articles on the topics of risk and governance.

Advisory Boards and Advisors
This report published by the Ontario Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship covers all aspects of managing effective advisory boards and how to find good advisors.
[ PDF : 877 KB ]

Good Corporate Governance
Click on Good Corporate Governance in this Deloitte website, for an overview of the relevant issues in this topic. The principles in this article can be applied to firms of any size that are governed by a Board of Directors.

Finding Good Advisors
Scroll to page 17 of the report on High performance Advisory Boards for useful tips for choosing the best advisors. This report is part of the Leading Growth Firms Series published by the Ontario Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
[ PDF : 877 KB ]