Sharpening strategic risk management

Sharpening strategic risk management

While conventional enterprise risk management (ERM) techniques have done a reasonable job in identifying and mitigating financial and operational risks, research shows that it is the management of strategic risk factors that will have the greatest impact on your ability to realise your strategic objectives. Bringing ERM into the forefront of strategic decision making and execution could thus give your business a decisive edge.

Strategic risks can be defined as the uncertainties and untapped opportunities embedded in your strategic intent and how well they are executed. As such, they are key matters for the board and impinge on the whole business, rather than just an isolated unit.

Strategic risk management is your organisation’s response to these uncertainties and opportunities. It involves a clear understanding of corporate strategy, the risks in adopting it and the risks in executing it. These risks may be triggered from inside or outside your organisation. Once they are understood, you can develop effective, integrated, strategic risk mitigation.

Far from holding back the business, strategic risk management is about augmenting strategic management and getting the full value from your strategy. In a typical instance, a conventional approach to setting and executing strategy might look at sales growth and service delivery. Rarely does it monitor the risks of a shortfall in demand.

Key questions for the board

  1. How well is my strategy actually defined?
  2. How broad are the risks that we are considering?
  3. What risk scenarios have we considered to test our plans?
  4. Have we mapped our risks to key performance and value measures?

Thank you for reading. If you have any opinions, please leave a comment below or send us a message.

The Startup Entrepreneur’s Guide To Risk Management

The Startup Entrepreneur’s Guide To Risk Management

Only 44% of small businesses stick around four years or more. One big reason so many go away: Poor risk management.

Fortunately, help is on the way from the guys at VC Experts (subscribe to their email here).

They’ve published a helpful how-to on the art of risk management from Akira Hirai, the founder and managing director of Cayenne Consulting. With permission, we’ve excerpted the best bits below.

The Risk Management Framework

“Risk Management” is the art and science of thinking about what could go wrong, and what should be done to mitigate those risks in a cost-effective manner.

In order to identify risks and figure out how best to mitigate them, we first need a framework for classifying risks.

Once we know the severity and likelihood of a given risk, we can answer the question: Does the benefit of mitigating a risk outweigh the cost of doing so?

  1. Quadrant A: Ignorable Risks
  2. Quadrant B: Nuisance Risks
  3. Quadrant C: Insurable Risks
  4. Quadrant D: The Company Killers

Identifying & Mitigating the Company Killers

Companies flatline when the cash runs out and total current liabilities (i.e., bills due now) exceed total liquid assets. Risk management is all about identifying and mitigating the uncertainties — especially the company killers — that surround cash flows.

Uncertainty plagues businesses in countless ways, but we can group most company killers into the following categories:

  1. Market Risks
  2. Competitive Risks
  3. Technology & Operational Risks
  4. Financial Risks
  5. People Risks
  6. Legal & Regulatory Risks
  7. Systemic Risks

The knowledge of risk management is also essential establishing a startup business. If you have any opinion, leave it in the comment box below or send us a message.

iView Systems’ iTrak® Business Intelligence Delivers Dynamic Dashboard Risk Analytics & Reporting

iView Systems’ iTrak® Business Intelligence Delivers Dynamic Dashboard Risk Analytics & Reporting

iView Systems, a leading provider of loss prevention solutions for the security and surveillance environment, is excited to announce the most recent addition to the iTrak® family of Incident Reporting and Risk Management solutions, the iTrak® BI (Business Intelligence) Module. The iTrak® BI Module delivers powerful dashboard visualizations from information reported in the iTrak Incident Reporting and Risk Management and other data sources in real-time, providing users a visual representation of their incident and other iTrak information. This allows organizations to quickly extract meaningful business intelligence to detect emerging trends & identify risks, threats & vulnerabilities.

iTrak® BI real-time, interactive dashboard reporting and visualization.

  1. Manages dynamic business data, providing the ability to control the visualization and analysis of data in real-time.
  2. iTrak® BI is equipped with a large selection of high-quality data controls and visualizations, effectively presenting the data to associated audience.
  3. Connects and consolidates data into one system, regardless of where your data resides; saving time and money.
  4. iTrak® BI empowers end-users to create, interpret, analyze and drill down through a wealth of information for effective decision-making in real time.
  5. iTrak® BI adapts to the business so users don’t have to adapt to the product.
  6. iTrak® BI gives users a range of viewing options that are designed specifically for both desktop and mobile delivery providing important metrics on the-go.
  7. iTrak® BI allows communication, collaboration and the ability to take direct action via commenting capability directly on the dashboards – allowing effective and immediate the insight to make better business decisions.
  8. iTrak® BI Dashboards lets users choose, filter, format and sort metrics they need to see, with the ability to share and collaborate the finished results (mashups) with other users.
  9. The web-based solution lets users create, view, and interact with dashboards directly in a web browser – with no need to install a separate desktop application.

If you have any question, leave us comments below of send us a message.

8 Risk Management Tactics Your Startup Should Have in Place

8 Risk Management Tactics Your Startup Should Have in Place

What is one risk management tactic you implemented during the early stages of your business to protect you and the company?

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

  1. Voice the Red Flags
  2. Hire a Tax Advisor
  3. Mind the Cash Flow
  4. Have Good Contracts
  5. Create an LLC
  6. Get Lean
  7. Insist on Down Payments

These strategies could be simple yet important. Do you have any thoughts? Post it in the comment box below or send us a message.

World Bank and Japan partner to improve disaster risk management in developing countries

World Bank and Japan partner to improve disaster risk management in developing countries

With loss and damages from disasters increasing globally, Japan and the World Bank launched a new program today that will help improve disaster risk management in developing countries. Activities under this program will have a strong focus on strengthening resilience, including risk identification, risk reduction, preparedness and financial protection – connecting Japan’s knowledge with global expertise to support development planning and investment.

“Japan has long been a leader in mainstreaming disaster risk management into the global development agenda, and their own experience shows us that prevention pays,” said Zoubida Allaoua, World Bank Acting Vice President for Sustainable Development. “The new program will have a global outreach, bringing expertise from Japan and beyond to developing countries, to help improve the lives of the people, particularly the poor, who are most vulnerable to disasters.”

Feel free to post your opinion in the comment below or send us a message.

Risk Management: A Look Back at 2013 and Ahead to 2014

Risk Management: A Look Back at 2013 and Ahead to 2014

According to Yo Delmar, vice president of MetricStream, 2013 has been witness to extraordinary change. We are living and doing business in an increasingly global, mobile, social and Big Data world, fraught with new risks and complex regulations. As such, individuals and organizations are struggling to keep pace.

In response to greater uncertainty, complexity and volatility throughout 2013, we’ve seen increased convergence and alignment amongst internal teams, including IT, security and the business. As a result, organizations are better poised to provide the context for communicating risks. We’ve also seen the business ecosystem evolve to include geographically diverse vendors and third parties, and as a result, organizations must continue to view these entities as part of the organization itself, and manage them in a more tightly and integrated way.

Growing convergence among IT, security and the business: The landscape of risk and compliance continues to evolve, as organizations are asked to manage their IT risk and compliance activities far beyond that of basic audit and compliance requirements of the past. As new technologies bring their own set of unique risks, there is a growing disconnect among internal audit, security, compliance and the business on what it means to build, manage and lead a truly safe, secure and successful business.

As a result, we are seeing more focused efforts when it comes to getting these groups on the same page by building a common risk language, as well as a discussion framework to enable cross-functional collaboration. Doing so can set the context for communicating risks in a way that drives more effective governance and decision-making across the board of directors, executive management team and each respective business function.

What is your 2014 resolutions? Leave us a comment or send us a message.

Supply Chain Institute: Welcome

Supply Chain Institute

Thank you for visiting our new preliminary Internet Site of Supply Chain Institute. As a new resource for BI, operation performance, and risk management, we want to keep you informed of the latest news, advancement in the field, and the offerings of the Institute. To that effect and the opportunity of networking, the site’s content management system has been designed for initial communication. It will enable us to always keep you up to date. With a few simple clicks, you will register on the site and become a member of the mailing list of our institute.

Presently, our web site is still under construction. We are making an effort to present you with our entire spectrum of offers (enhanced by your suggestions and recommendations) as soon as possible. In the near future we will provide you with information regarding BI, risk, and performance analysis in the context of supply chain management. The emphasis of our business is on the new methodology and technology on the core competency and focus of the Institute, Supply Chain Management. This topic is certainly of interest to you. Please register and check this site later. You may email us at info@supplychaininstitute.com or call us at (919)618-0743. Our fax number is (419) 818-8537.

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Risk Management

Risk Management

For any business, supply and demand chain disruption represent at least, an immediate financial risk, that no business can afford to let it to happen. At worst, any disruption will have long term ramification on the future revenue. The fact of the matter is that disruption doesn’t happen out of a sudden. It is preceded by its precursor signals. These signals either are not detected or are ignored. So a proper proactive risk management program should be designed such that it encompasses and incorporates all active networks of a supply and demand chain. This way, any variance is detected at early stage on the upstream or downstream networks.

In our approach we investigate financial risk, environmental risk, and risk to customers. In a quantitative approach, the bottom line is profit against loss. In methodology we practice, the focus is on identification, evaluation, analysis and optimal management. We believe that any business action or decision generates risk. Consequently we have to learn to live with it. The way that civilizations have rid out the natural disasters exemplifies our recommended approach; risk tolerance. An organization can best survive any interruption or even disaster if risk tolerance is embedded in its infrastructure. This is the basic philosophy of supply chain Institute in dealing with risk.

In near future, we will introduce curriculum of risk management in the form of workshop tailored for industrial applications.

Supply Chain, Risk, and BI Management

Supply Chain, Risk, and BI Management

Greetings:

In response to colleagues request and market demand for SCM, BI, and Risk, I am initiating a lecture (posting) series under the title of:

“Risk, and Business Intelligence in the context of Supply and Demand Chain Management.”

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Risk Management Workshop

Curriculum In Risk

Risk Management Across Global Supply Chain

Application in Procurement

Summary:

In Today’s competitive market, Risk Management represents a new shift in businesses paradigm. As the economies become more service driven and globally oriented, businesses cannot afford to let new, unforeseen areas of risk remain unidentified and unattended. Currency fluctuations, human resources in foreign countries, evaporating distribution channels, corporate governance, unprecedented dependence on technology, flow of raw material to manufacturing sites, manufacturing process and the logistics of delivery of finished goods are just a few of the new risks businesses must assess and manage.

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