Integrated risk management entails bringing together all areas of risk effectively and efficiently to reduce costs and enable insights that have previously been unobtainable. If that sounds more like a pipe dream than a potential reality at your organization, then it’s likely suffering from one or more of the five symptoms of an isolated organization:
- Silos of activity: Do different departments within your organization operate more like separate businesses, rather than in concert with one another?
- Poor communication: Does it seem like the right hand isn’t talking to the left hand, creating confusion and missteps?
- Duplicated efforts: Is everyone recreating the wheel–creating more spinning than actual forward progress?
- Lost opportunities: Do organizational initiatives tend to stagnate? Does its size or structure inhibit the business from being nimble and making positive change?
- Reputational crises: Is your organization struggling to detect and manage issues that can affect reputation?
Such challenges are not unique. Nor do they exist neatly within the risk management department…or even within the scope of the risk department’s responsibility. Still, such challenges can be major risks to the stability of an organization if they go unaddressed.
But they will certainly go unaddressed if they aren’t detected, and they likely won’t be detected unless a.) it’s too late and the damage is already done, or, b.) tools and processes are in place to facilitate transparency among departments–not just risk professionals.
For example, an isolated organization might consider vendor management a compliance issue alone and offload it to a single department just to “check a box” and ensure vendor standards are met. However, if multiple departments are included in managing vendors–offering their input, analysis and insights–vendor management becomes less of a one-off initiative and more of a business and brand strategy.
Read the ROI of Integrated Risk Management or Why Brand and Risk Management Go Hand in Hand
The right risk management technology will enable integrated risk management to occur organically and seamlessly–offering organizations one source of truth, a consistent overview of risks, economies of scale, and efficiencies in treating risk. It will provide critical insight into all the strategic and operational risks across the enterprise and what is being done to manage these risks to align with the risk tolerance of the organization.
Listen to the following Webinar to learn about the challenges of being an isolated organization and how your organization can implement integrated risk management.
