Strategic Thought

ARM >

 Risk & Technology

This section deals with two aspects of risk and information technology. Firstly, we look at the question of "Why should we automate our risk process at all?" There is a further question to be answered once you are comfortable with the requirement to automate your risk management process which is "What technical attributes should this automated system have in order for us to implement it as easily as possible, with maximum compatibility, whilst protecting our investment into the future?"

Why Automate?

Irrespective of the industry in which they work, Risk Managers are facing a common problem when it comes to managing their risk information. 

• an increasing amount of risk information that man-agers are required to collect, analyze and report on
• a more frequent obligation to report on the above analysis and findings.

Risk Managers must pursue solutions that automate the process of collecting, organizing, analyzing and communicating their risks in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

A manually intensive or un-automated risk process leads to 3 major issues: 

• Risk information is out of date by the time it is reported. Due to the amount of time and energy spent collecting and organizing the information, regardless of whether reporting occurs annually or quarterly, the information is often already out of date and does not reflect the current risk situation facing an organization.
• Enterprise Risk Management becomes Reactive vs. Proactive. With the risk information out of date, new risks are not identified or managed and mitigation strategies are not executed in a proactive fashion leading to negative impacts to the organization.
• The ERM Process never grows. A process that cannot be effectively and efficiently deployed does not add value currently. It has no path to enable growth and maturity of your ERM process into the future.

What are some of the benefits of Automating your risk process?

• It institutionalizes the Risk Management Process
• It ensure no key risks “slip through the cracks” in the organisation
• It pushes the risk ownership down to where it belongs in the organisation
• It communicates risk events in real time
• It helps you to makes key risk decisions faster
• It helps your organization to adhere to a Risk Management Process
• It improves the efficiency of collection, analysis, reporting and communication of risk data
• It improves data accuracy
• It reduces the risk of “not knowing what you don’t know”
• It prevents the risk of perpetuating errors caused by un-audited use of spreadsheets.

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of automation, then please download the flyer from the box on the right.

Click here to learn about the technology requirements that you should expect from a risk management solution.