Risk Management

Is your business ready to deal with unforeseen events?

Summary

These can seriously impact your effectiveness and profitability. Our Risk Management Consultancy Services increase your ability to respond to the unknown as it happens.

The definition of 'risk'

What is risk? Risk is commonly understood to be the possibility of a harmful or disruptive event that leads to failure and/or losses. In the context of change and improvement, there is another face to risk that of opportunity. Business change requires innovation, taking advantage of new opportunities and managing the risks involved. In this context then, and as defined by HM Treasury,

Her majesty's treasury“risk is defined as the uncertainty of outcome, whether positive opportunity or negative threat, of actions and events. It is the combination of likelihood and impact, including perceived importance.”

Our Risk Management Consultancy Services are used for the identification, quantification, assessment, prioritisation and assignment of ownership. We then look at economical use of resources to take mitigating action to reduce, minimise, eliminate or anticipate them. It’s then important to monitor and review status and to test preparedness.

Often risk management is seen as risk logs, risk reviews and some business continuity testing. However, good risk management is a way of life.  Firstly, it permeates the way activities are planned and subsequently resourced and managed. While it is impossible for organisations to remove all risk, it is important they properly understand and manage the risks. These need to be managed to a determined level they are willing to accept in the context of the organisation’s overall corporate strategy. Inadequate risk management can result, as highlighted by Investopedia,

investopedia“in severe consequences for companies, individuals, and the economy. For example, the subprime mortgage meltdown in 2007 that helped trigger the Great Recession stemmed from bad risk-management decisions, such as lenders who extended mortgages to individuals with poor credit; investment firms who bought, packaged, and resold these mortgages; and funds that invested excessively in the repackaged, but still risky, mortgage-backed securities (MBS).”

Our Approach

Risk causes are many, as an example:

market disruptions | strategic failures | competitor activity | errors in design or development | failures in production or operations | legal or financial liabilities | credit risk | accidents | natural causes | disasters | epidemics | regulatory violations or misinterpretations | deliberate attacks, or any event of the uncertain or unpredictable outcome.

With such a diverse possibility of causes, it’s important a systematic approach is adopted to manage risks effectively. As a result, we have developed the Risk Management Framework© which has three parts to it:

  1. Analysis of Risk
  2. Risk and Business Continuity Planning
  3. Managing Risk

 

Many risk causes will have similar consequences and therefore similar mitigation actions. This is why our risk management plan is not organised by the long list of risk causes, but rather by the likely impacts at different time stages, as an example:

  • Project/programme
  • Implementation/rollout, and
  • BAU deployment

The plan is set out that when a risk emerges and the likely impact is identified. From this, the appropriate governance level is easily identified and engaged to review and authorise the mitigation actions. As a result, this approach limits surprises and because mitigation actions are predefined, response time is quick. This then reduces downtime for resources and the likelihood of the impact growing.

Risk Management Consultancy Services