As the Co-founder of RiskSmart, I’ve had the privilege of speaking to senior leaders and Risk Management teams of companies across various businesses.

Throughout the sales and onboarding process, I’ve noticed that senior leaders share many of the same scepticism and challenges when faced with moving to a Risk Management System from spreadsheets or looking to change to a more suitable system for their business.

In this blog, I will address some of those challenges and explain how RiskSmart eliminates or mitigates these issues.  

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Money, money, money – it's not even remotely funny 

One of the main challenges we face during our discovery and sales process is a limited budget. 

There’s no denying that spreadsheets are mostly a free tool that most people can use. Finding a Risk Management System with a price that won’t make your CFO choke on their morning coffee is also rare.  

So why invest in a Risk Management system?  

The answer is simple: for your company's health and strength and to ensure your strategy stays on track.  

Based on data from PwC’s global Risk Survey 2023, 40% of the businesses surveyed said their organisation had built a more robust risk process to comply with regulatory standards in the last year.

If you look at the top-performing 5% of those companies, this number jumps to a whopping 81%.

Spending money where it matters 

If the above statistic wasn’t enough to prove that investing in your Risk framework is getting huge buy-in from successful companies, let’s look at another angle: consumers demand more.

According to the same PwC survey, only 31% of consumers who participated agreed that businesses are spending more money on compliance.  

As consumer power and awareness grows, so does the number of complaints we see from regular people. Companies can find it challenging to keep up with demands, especially if the only thing between you and a potential FCA fine is an out-of-date Excel sheet.  

Are spreadsheets actually free?  

Earlier, we mentioned that the cost of implementing a system can sound counterintuitive to business leaders. But I want you to take a couple of minutes and consider: are spreadsheets actually free?  

Ask yourself these questions:  

• How much time does your team use adding and maintaining data manually?
• Are my spreadsheets up to date?  
• Can I view data in real-time?  
• Can everyone access, understand and use spreadsheets?  
• Are we duplicating any work across the business due to a lack of visibility?
• Are we at risk of using out-of-date data? 
  

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, it might be time to look into a Risk Management platform like RiskSmart.

This helps you navigate and fully understand your risk landscape by: 

• Saving your staff hundreds of hours a year on manual data entry.
• Closing tasks up to five times faster.
• Reduce reporting time by up to 70%.
• Reduce operational costs by up to 40%. 

Not to mention the cost and impact you’ll save on being more prepared and aware of risks in your landscape.  

Learn more about RiskSmart 

A Risk Management System for the whole business 

Not only does RiskSmart believe that you should see the return on investment in a Risk Management System, but your wider business should benefit from it, too.  

That’s why we offer unlimited licences at no extra cost. You can add people without a fee, ensuring budgets are not stretched as the business grows. It’s a Risk Management System that scales and evolves with your business and keeps spend under control.  

Breaking down the silos 

Another common theme among leaders is how Risk management often takes quite a siloed approach. The result is that the important work Risk professionals do is often not visible, or the business highly underrates the value of it.  

This is perfectly illustrated in a Linkedin Article by Sentrient, where 57% of senior executives surveyed ranked risk and compliance as one of the top categories they find themselves the least prepared to address.  

Breaking down silos allows better collaboration and efficiency across the teams, and choosing a system that makes information and reports readily available helps you achieve this as a leader.  

A solution that evolves with your company and strategy 

Multi-product and jurisdiction are easily managed in RiskSmart but cause considerable growing pains in spreadsheets. Ensuring your company has a suitable solution to support growth is key to setting yourself up for success.  

Let’s look at an example of how RiskSmart facilitates this: 

Imagine that you’re managing risk for one product in one country.

As you grow and expand, the number of products increases, as do the countries you operate in. This means risks and controls can multiply, and regulations are completely different, with different people managing them in different time zones.  

Scaling a company at speed commands a Risk Management System that facilitates consistency and collaboration, and that’s what RiskSmart brings to the table.  

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Why should CEOs and senior leaders care about getting involved in Risk Management?

 

Risk has had a bad name for years.

Quite frankly, it’s completely misplaced. In organisations, Risk tends to be seen as negative and business prevention.  

Spoiler alert: It’s absolutely not.  

When done correctly and proportionately, it should enable the business to meet and exceed its objectives by identifying what could get in the way and putting actions and steps in place to mitigate or eliminate risk. Positive risk cultures permeate across the business and lead to stronger, more resilient companies. As leaders, it’s up to us to champion this culture.  

So far, we’re not.  

 

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail 

Let's look at some of the leading surveys in the GRC space.

We can see that 65% of corporate risk and compliance professionals said using technology would help reduce manual labour and streamline risk management (The 2023 Thomson Reuters Risk & Compliance Survey Report).  

But in the same breath, we see the Coalfire Compliance Report 2023 mention that 60% of GRC users still manage compliance manually, with spreadsheets being their only tool.

It's time to turn the tides and for senior leaders to invest.  

Learn more about RiskSmart 

How can risk leaders get more buy-in from senior leaders?  

• Reach out to the business: A hands-on approach by speaking to people and understanding what’s happening around the business is often the best port of call. This is often easier said than done for a Risk team struggling with a heavy workload, but it will give you a much more rounded view of the business.
   
• Determine your risk maturity level: How do you compare to benchmarks across your industry? Getting to know your risk maturity level is key to understanding your next steps and how to improve your risk management structure. We have several resources to help you get started with this, like our eBook: Buyers Guide to Risk Management Software. 
  
  Our team of RiskTech experts are also on hand to help. Get in touch with the team for free advice.
  
  
  
• Building the right relationships: Make sure you’re frequently updating and building open and honest relationships with the right people will make it easier for you to get the buy-in you need for the company to invest in risk.  
  

• Communicating risk data concisely and clearly: Use your data to fuel your business's decisions. This starts with making it easy for everyone in the business to interpret and understand. Choosing a Risk Management System that helps you communicate and visualise your data is key.  
  
   
  Interested in learning more about how RiskSmart can help you? Get in touch.