Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is top of mind at most organizations as risks become increasingly complex. As such, ERM often takes the spotlight at educational conferences for risk and insurance professionals, including the North Carolina State University ERM Roundtable Summit.

Check out these Ten Take-Aways from the Spring 2017 NC State ERM Roundtable Summit, as drafted by Bonnie Hancock, Executive Director of North Carolina State University’s ERM Initiative. See Hancock’s abbreviated list below, or read the more in depth version on NC State’s Poole College of Management website:

  1. Organizations should look for ways to strengthen the integration between strategy and ERM.
  2. ERM professionals need to stress the connection between risks and their organization’s objectives.
  3. Position ERM as a resource to make people throughout the organization “look good.”
  4. The ERM team needs to create a stakeholder network that can serve as an extension to your ERM office.
  5. Manage expectations and pace the rate at which you advance your ERM process.
  6. Re-position your management level risk committee to be more strategic.
  7. Map out the multitude of assurance activities within your organization.
  8. Focus on the ”known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.”
  9. Develop “play books” for your top risks.
  10. Use table top exercises to ensure your organization is as prepared as possible.

Enterprise Risk Management brings together all the significant risks of an organization in a way that enables the organization to most effectively manage those risks. Integrated Risk Management technology can help organizations achieve this by giving users the ability to easily measure, rank and manage all risk-related elements from a single source of truth. As a result, users can more quickly and accurately report the status of the organization’s end goals than if they were using spreadsheets.

Still wondering how your company can understand and refine their ERM processes? Here are 4 easy steps:

Is your company’s ERM process aligned with today’s risks?

While companies around the globe share a common need to balance risk and return, studies like this one underscore the importance of continuing to mature your risk management processes in the face of increasingly complex risks. Rate your company on some of these insights derived from the survey:

  1. Do your company’s executives consider risk exposure when evaluating new strategic initiatives? If so, are the data and insights used to inform those decisions coming from formalized risk management processes?
  2. Are you satisfied with the quality of the Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) and other output from your risk identification and assessment processes, and are they available to executives via reports or dashboards?
  3. Do you have clear, formal definitions built into your process, including an agreed-upon definition of the term “risk”? What about an ongoing risk inventory?
  4. Do you provide regular, formal training or guidance to your executives on risk management practices, and does your company tie performance/compensation to risk management?

Risk management technology can significantly shrink the gap between the risks you know exist and how proactively your company is managing them. Read this to learn how risk management technology enables your ERM program to keep pace with the risks of today and tomorrow.