TLDR:
Risk and Control Self-Assessments (RCSAs) are crucial for understanding and managing risk in any organisation, but they're often painful to complete. RiskSmart’s RCSA Wizard provides everything you need to plan, complete, and store the data collected throughout the process, with an intuitive user experience. In this post, we’ll specifically show you how it guides users through completing an RSCA and why it’s a game-changer for risk professionals and business leaders alike.

What is an RCSA, and why do they matter?

Risk and Control Self-Assessment (RCSA) is a structured process that helps organisations identify risks, assess their potential impact, evaluate the effectiveness of existing controls, and determine residual risk.

It’s a foundational enterprise risk management (ERM) activity, and is essential for proactive, informed decision-making.

But while the value of RCSAs is clear, the process itself is often tedious. Too many organisations still rely on manual spreadsheets, email chains, and disjointed tools, turning what should be a strategic activity into an administrative burden. 

Enter: RiskSmart’s RCSA Wizard 

That’s exactly why we built the RiskSmart RSCA Wizard.  

This tool is designed to help you plan an RSCA while also guiding, simplifying, and speeding up the process, making it easier to involve people across the business without extensive training,  gathering more reliable data, and supporting people throughout the process.

How the RSCA wizard works

Imagine this: It’s RCSA showtime! As the risk professional, you need to engage front-line managers and leadership, asking them to complete this process for the risks they own.  

Instead of relying on spreadsheets, Word docs, Google Forms, Slack messages, emails and occasional blackmail, you simply ask risk owners and stakeholders to complete RCSAs, and direct them to RiskSmart, where they can clearly see all the assessments they own, and where it clearly indicates where action is needed. All they have to do to update, is to follow simple, guided steps.

Even better, this is tailor-made to your framework and contains your specific language and process.  

How RiskSmart’s RCSA Wizard works

Typically, the process would look something like this: 

In the Assessment area of the platform under the Activities folder, users will be able to filter activities by ownership. This means that with the click of a button, they can easily see all the activities assigned to them and their progression status. 

Once they're ready to start, they click on the risk, and then prompt the RCSA wizard to begin by clicking "Start RSCA". 

This brings up their Wizard guide: 

• Step 1 involves risk owners reviewing the risk details, correcting any inaccuracies, and making any necessary updates.  
• Step 2 allows them to add a rating describing the likelihood and impact of the risk.  
• Step 3 involves reviewing previous and current controls and assessing their effectiveness. This also allows them to remove any controls that are no longer relevant to the risk.  
• For Step 4, owners would add a residual risk rating, which also allows them to review past ratings.   

Users who are listed as an Owners or Contributors of a risk, will also be able to access the RSCA Wizard directly through a Risk. 

What makes our tool different?

• User-friendly: It uses clear prompts, minimal jargon, and intuitive design to make it easy for non-risk people to complete RCSAs.
• Configurable: Built to reflect your framework, processes, and risk appetite statements.
• Integrated: Data from assessments connects seamlessly across the platform, enriching dashboards, reports and audits.
• Scalable: RiskSmart overall is designed to support growing organisations with a simple pricing model that doesn't charge for user licences.
   

Tying it all together 

Once the risk owner finishes the RCSA Wizard process, this will save their changes and store all data under the “Assessments” area in RiskSmart.  

Not only does it make collecting and storing RCSA data easier, but it also automatically connects and links the input to every other relevant element throughout the platform.  

Simplifying risk 

As with every other aspect of risk management, RiskSmart aims to simplify and demystify risk management practices.

The RCSA Wizard's feature of how it guides users through a process is a perfect example of how the tool is designed to support your entire company while still providing risk professionals with advanced and highly configurable tools.  

By making processes easier, faster, and more transparent, you’re not just building a richer database of risk information; you’re also elevating risk culture and lowering the barriers for people across the company to get involved.