BDO's Corporate Governance: Structure, Risks, and Strategy Analysis

This report provides an overview of BDO Global's organizational structure, internal and external environmental factors, and existing risk factors, highlighting the steps that should be taken to enhance the business and key functions assisting the achievement of strategy. It discusses the administrative structure of BDO Global, including the Council, Global Board, and Executive of BDO International Limited, along with regional divisions such as EMEA, Americas, and Asia Pacific. The report also examines the internal and external factors affecting BDO's operations, such as pricing structures, technological changes, community involvement, and internal controls. Furthermore, it identifies key risks like data breaches, financial fluctuations, and increasing competition, and suggests actions to enhance performance, including improving accounting services, organizing training programs, and revising planning activities. The report concludes that BDO's service-oriented strategy, combined with effective management techniques, can convert risks into opportunities in the competitive financial services environment, emphasizing the importance of integrating business functions with the overall strategy to achieve sustainable success.

Running Head: CORPORATE GOVERANNCE
BDO and Governance
Options and Issues

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The organisational structure of a company describes the flow and direction of activities in
order to accomplish aims of the organization as well as assures the growth of the company
BDO is an international system that provides accounting services, tax and business
consultative services to the firms functioning professional services under the supervision of
BDO. BDO is abbreviated as Binder Dicker Otter having its member firms in more than 162
countries and it has headquarter in Zaventem, Belgium. BDO Global is one of the top five
organisations providing professional accounting services with more than 1500 offices all over
the world. BDO along with its partners employ nearly 75000 employees across the globe and
has announced global revenue of nearly $8.1 billion in the year 2017. This essay focuses on
the organisational structure of the firm, internal and external environmental factors, existing
risk factors, the steps that should be taken to enhance the business and key functions assisting
the achievement of strategy (Kingdom, 2015).
The BDO Global is administrated by the Council, the Global Board and the Executive of
BDO International Limited. Council involves one representative from each voting member,
and signifies the members of BDO International in annual general meeting. The Council is
responsible for approving BDO and its network’s budget and conducting changes in the
Regulations and Articles of Association of BDO International Limited. BDO consists a range
of global committees who are responsible for reporting directly to the CEO and particular
member of the Leadership Team. International committees of BDO are named as Executive,
Board Audit, Compensation, Corporate Governance, Nominations, Risk management, Trust,
IT Steering and Related Party Transactions Committee. The number of members in these
committee can be decreased and increased by the board as per requirement. Along with this,
to simplify the coordination and communication of tasks, BDO is also separated in three
regions named as EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Americas (Latin America,
Caribbean and North America) and Asia Pacific. These are facilitated by individual regional
board which meets with the Global Board once in a year (Global, 2018).
Being a financial organization, BDO trusts that right of participation and ethical behaviour
motivates the strength and assurance of the investors and partners. Since industry of
accounting and financial services provider is categorized by regular changes in environment
because of rules, regulations and laws, BDO also have various external and internal factors
that effects its working. The major external factors are pricing structure prevailing in the
market, presence of internet facilities, community involvement, quick changes in information
technology, changes in governing compliance, disaster management, and economic recession.

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For the purpose of community involvement, management should focus on branding its
services in context with customers view (Maverick, 2018). It will help in increasing customer
base and also increase in profitability of the firm. Along with this unusual expectations of
customers with limited resources in one of the important business affecting aspect because
management has to fulfil the demands of customer without any excuses. This consumes a lot
of time and other important tasks get delay in this process (Burbidge, 2016).
Similarly internal forces that impact the business of BDO, are management of safety &
security, effectiveness of internal control system, internal relations of employees as well as
management and working atmosphere within the boundaries that affect the working
capability of the employees. Successful management of confidential information of the
customers is one of the major inter factor and responsibility of the firm. In order to successful
application of strategies, both internal as well as external sources should be well managed
and linked to each other. For this purpose different strategies are required to be formulated in
accordance with the impact environmental factors. Therefore, the mission and objectives,
value system, financial factors and internal relationship get impacted as a result of external
and internal environmental forces (Organisation, 2018).
BDO facilitates organisations to achieve consistent performance and reliable improvement in
their operations by assisting optimisation of business procedure and services development. In
order to increase productivity and reducing cost, management of BDO has to face a number
of risks prevailing at present. One of the main of those factors are breaches or theft of private
and technology security, which may result into loss of financial data of its member
organisations (SimpliLearn, 2018). Fluctuation of stock and revenue, diversification of
products, war, natural disasters and terrorist attacks are some factors which may lead to
failure execution of corporate strategy. While the U.S. government is observing a controlling
renovation, a bunch of compound regulations and procedures can surely create a concern for
the organisation. Beside this, increasing competition is the biggest risk associated factor
which includes market sharing and struggle for contracts as well as to retaining and
fascinating the talent (Sand, 2016).
Management of BDO can take various actions in order to enhance the performance of the
organisation. The first step should be taken by the management is improving the class of
accounting services and the positioning of accounting properties. For this purpose, more

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resources should be allocated to management and the functions that are not beneficial, should
be eliminated. For efficient working performance of the employees, training programme
should be organised for accounting staff and budget managers to keep them updated about all
new changes. It will result in improve in performance as well as elimination of conceptual
errors. Along with this, training programmes should also be planned that will help in expand
user knowledge about available accounting services. Board of BDO should develop a fresh
portfolio indicating performance of employees on quarterly, half yearly and yearly basis.
Management should revise the planning activities of accounting for excluding the codes that
are not relevant in present accounting functions and should introduce new codes that are
beneficial to attain objectives of the organization (Goffin & Mitchell, 2016).
The crucial aspect that should be followed by the BDO for becoming a successful accounting
and financial service provider is facilitating high quality services with no errors. For this
purpose systematic methods and procedures should be introduced for reducing time and
errors. In order to increase profitability BDO should use techniques like profit mapping and
reduction in cost which will automatically result in increase in revenue and management of
overpaid taxes which are to be recovered this year. Such decisions related to business
practices will assist in enhancing the organizational performance of BDO (Chron, 2018).
The strategy of BDO is not only profit oriented but also service oriented because it is an
accounting and assurance service providing organisation. It cannot focus only on sales since
this will distract form the area of service. For the purpose of achieving this strategy,
Management of BDO should integrate its business functions with the strategy. The main
functions of BDO includes preparation and planning of Tax, valuation and development of
business, payroll and operational bookkeeping, audit assurance and preparation of financial
accounts representing true and fair view of the member firms. Equal consideration is required
to be given to all the functions for the achievement of strategy (Tobago, 2018).
BDO Global has introduced some new functions and strategies to meet challenges and to
capture new opportunities. They established such process that consist enhancement of
profitability, understanding of interactions and value creation. Their key function is to
enhance profitability, working diligently with customers and create a sense of taking care of
customers. Recently BDO Global has adopted a new strategy named as Go-To-Market
Strategy for achieving its objectives. It refers to the bundle of incorporated tactics which a
firm will use to associate its business and customers. BDO’s Go-To-Market Strategy is a way

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by which they offer to provide unique and valuable services to the target market (Kerzner,
2018).
BDO majorly assist on the tax planning, auditing and assurance, bookkeeping, payrolls,
finance and succession planning. For tax preparation and planning managers use expertise
knowledge to draw up effective tax plans that can defer and reduce taxes from the business.
The professionals of BDO monitors the strategies of their clients so that they can assist at the
time of any changes in legislation. To assist in payroll, the team of BDO is always remains up
to date on ever changing regulations. The main function of BDO also includes focusing on
the business, customers and reorganised governance. For this purpose, management have
expanded its market penetration along with the maintenance of flexible and lean structures
(Bradley, 2016).
Therefore, it can be concluded that BDO is an emerging financial service provider with its
effective functioning. Although there are many internal and external environmental factors
but the management of BDO has adopted some key strategies that will prove beneficial in the
fulfilment of objectives. In this competitive environment, BDO provides stability and security
to its clients when it moves to the business management which is helpful in gaining faith of
clients. Since there are some risk associated in the environmment but with effective
management techniques and elimination of unnecessary procedures, such risks can be
converted into opportunities.

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References
Bradley, G. (2016). Benefit Realisation Management: A Practical Guide to Achieving Benefits Through
Change. Gower Publishing. Retrieved March 31, 2018
Burbidge, N. (2016). Risk and Opprortunity. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from Global Risk Landscape
2016: https://www.bdo.es/getattachment/7c2311ad-5b3e-44ee-8f86-b63adbb4fdfe/BDO-
Global-Risk-Landscape.pdf.aspx?lang=en-GB&ext=.pdf&disposition=attachment
Chron. (2018). Five ways to manage financial risk. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-ways-manage-financial-risk-4564.html
Global, B. (2018). Council. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from
https://www.bdo.global/en-gb/about/governance/council
Goffin, K., & Mitchell, R. (2016). Innovation Management Effective Strategy and Implementation.
Palgrave. Retrieved March 31, 2018
Kerzner, H. (2018). Project Management Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence. New York:
Wiley & Sons. Retrieved March 21, 2018
Kingdom, B. U. (2015, May 26). Survey: International Report 2015. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from
https://www.bdo.co.uk/en-gb/insights/industries/manufacturing/international-report-2015
Maverick, J. (2018). What are the major categories of financial risk for a company? Retrieved MARCH
31, 2018, from https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/062415/what-are-major-
categories-financial-risk-company.asp
Organisation. (2018). Retrieved March 31, 2018, from BDO Finland:
https://www.bdo.fi/en-gb/about/why-choose-bdo/organisation
Sand, J. (2016, July). BDO analysis reveals risks facing big technology companies. Retrieved March 31,
2018, from BDO Global: https://www.bdo.global/en-gb/blogs/tech-media-watch-blog/july-
2016/bdo-analysis-reveals-risks-facing-big-technology-c
SimpliLearn. (2018). Financial Risk and Its Types. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from
https://www.simplilearn.com/financial-risk-and-types-rar131-article
Tobago, B. T. (2018). Outsourced Finance Function. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from BDO Trinidad
and Tobago: https://www.bdo.tt/en-gb/services/business-services-outsourcing/outsourced-
finance-function

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