RISKONNECT: Enabling a New Perspective to Risk Management

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Jim Wetekamp, CEO

While corporations are beginning to understand the importance of integrated risk management solutions, there still exists a number of challenges associated with the implementation of these solutions along with the proper education of employees and executives. Organizations need to ensure security with adequate precautions and safety measures. Be it the infrastructure or the health and safety of employees, eliminating risks is as vital as devising a business strategy. Moreover, threats can stem from various sources, including financial uncertainty, legal liabilities, natural disasters, accidents, and strategic management errors. Therefore, enterprises need to start looking beyond their traditional risk areas and, most importantly, develop strategies to combat these risks. Today, there are many risk management solution providers helping organizations achieve safety and security. One such maven that is leading the market with its integrated risk management technology is Riskonnect. Headquartered in Kennesaw, GA, Riskonnect was founded in 2007 with the mission to empower organizations to manage risks better. In fact, Riskonnect embraced the concept of integrated risk management since its inception.

"We continue to expand and refine our products and services to give our customers the clearest view of risk across the enterprise"

“We are the only provider in the market with a single unified solution that connects the dots between insurable and non-insurable risks,” says Jim Wetekamp, CEO of Riskonnect. The company offers a suite of cloud-based solutions that enable enterprises to make informed strategic decisions by tracking, analyzing, connecting, and mitigating risk throughout the organization. Riskonnect’s highly customizable solutions are a perfect fit for forward-thinking organizations that face increased scrutiny and liability for corporate governance and regulatory compliance. With Riskonnect’s help, such organizations can effectively plan for and respond intelligently to all kinds of threats that can adversely affect their competitive position by damaging corporate reputation and restrict growth.

Delivering a Unified Solution for Risk Management

Riskonnect offers a unified, automated risk-assessment solution to provide critical insights about all the strategic and operational risks across enterprises. The integrated solution is designed to address risks across a variety of levels in an organization, including strategies and tactics. Data silos across their organization make it challenging to identify, analyze, and utilize risk information effectively. Riskonnect provides a holistic view of all organization risk management processes facilitating more refined risk management strategies and improved remediation processes. This helps organizations manage risks better, reduce liability, improve performance, and increase stakeholder value. While risk and compliance management vendors provide several point solutions, they tend to follow an unsustainable cost and delivery model. In contrast, Riskonnect’s solution features a lower total cost of ownership, ease-of-use, and simple configuration. An integrated risk management approach enables enterprises to have a consistent overview of risks and make informed decisions by mitigating risk throughout the organization.

Riskonnect also offers Insights, a revolutionary intelligence solution that gives risk managers and executive leadership the ability to turn data into meaningful, actionable insights that can be used to drive decision-making at every level of an organization quickly. Riskonnect Insights provides more than just information; it allows organizations to connect and understand critical questions about how risk affects the organization. By monitoring data in real time, Riskonnect Insights can alert when any change reaches thresholds that demand the attention of a risk manager for proactively mitigating dangerous threats. In addition, Riskonnect Insights uses multiple data sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, OSHA, the National Hurricane Center, and the U.S. Geological Survey, only to name a few. Riskonnect Insights is also fully mobile and cloud-based; thus, leadership can manage risk from the palm of their hands at any time and place.

We are the only provider in the market with a single unified solution that connects the dots between insurable and non-insurable risks

Maintaining Compliance with Riskonnect

Compliance and regulatory management programs offered by risk management solution providers often focus address singular sources of risk, such as hazards like fires or earthquakes. And they fail to bring value to organizations because they do not connect the silos of risk management present in many organizations. This often causes confusion, inefficiency, and duplication of efforts within an organization leading to wasted resources. Therefore, organizations need to develop an embedded risk management and risk awareness culture for the success of any compliance and regulatory management programs. A suitable technology solution can facilitate and moreover propel compliance and regulatory programs to a significantly more mature level, while also optimizing internal controls. Alongside, business decisions can be more strategic and opportunistic when decision-makers can understand that risks and performance are interconnected. With Riskonnect’s integrated risk management solutions, clients can be confident that they have the right technology, systems, and knowledge necessary to have a holistic view of the entire risk management spectrum. This will allow them to anticipate, assess, and minimize risks across their organization.

Identifying Risks with the Greatest Possible Impact

Integrating enterprise risk management has posed significant obstacles for the internal audit function as risks cannot be managed in silos. Riskonnect’s Internal Audit solution allows organizations to take a risk-based auditing approach to identify risks with the greatest potential impact. As risks can be segregated top-down and bottom-up, audit teams can identify and capture the most critical risks and address them accordingly. In addition to improved risk identification and management, internal audit teams can ensure that a company’s objectives are aligned with the management’s view of risk. The scope of risk management has expanded beyond insurable risks to non-insurable risks that could have a significant impact on an enterprise. For instance, the risk of damaging an organization’s reputation in today’s media dominated environment is a growing threat. Internal audit teams play a vital role in managing these new risks, and it is essential to keep this function appraised to ensure that best practices are being followed.

Riskonnect’s Internal Audit solution helps clients achieve tangible results and enables them to efficiently manage the entire audit process on a secure platform that simplifies data collection and analysis while providing precise and actionable intelligence.

A Reliable Partner to Clients

Riskonnect is the trusted, preferred partner for enabling organizations to manage strategic and operational risks across the enterprise, serving more than 900 companies across six continents. Among it numerous clients is Avery Dennison, a multinational company that offers labeling and packaging materials and solutions for various markets and industries. The client wanted a partner that could transform their existing risk management processes and thus decided to employ Riskonnect’s services. Over the course of 18 months, Riskonnect was able to change the way Avery Dennison gathered, analyzed, and communicated information. This enabled the client to become more efficient, effective, and reliable. Previously, Avery Dennison had to sort through separate emails and merge spreadsheets with information about its manufacturing facilities, warehouses, and other properties around the world. This cumbersome process invited a large number of errors. Riskonnect implemented an automated process where individual contacts can insert the information directly into the Riskonnect portal. The automated data collection process gives better information to Avery Dennison so that they can better communicate with insurance carriers. The Riskonnect portal also serves as the primary source for reporting worker compensation claims. Riskonnect’s solution tracks all the details of a claim, including the time, costs, and causes of injury. The results are communicated to local managers to make sure that safety-and-prevention programs will ensure that claims and costs are reduced to a minimum. After having such a positive experience, Avery Dennison considers Riskonnect as a long term strategic partner and not merely a vendor.

Preparing for Threats Inherent in Digital Disruption

New technologies such as artificial intelligence hold the potential to add more convenience to daily tasks and also make businesses run efficiently and smarter. However, along with the benefits comes the threat of unanticipated risks, and as more companies transition to digital, managing these risks become essential. Now, risks associated with digital are different for every organization; for instance, in a manufacturing company, automating key business processes results in employee layoffs and corresponding operational risks of downsizing. Regardless of industry, the most common risk is security. For instance, WhatsApp, a cross-platform social messaging app was hacked and the perpetrators installed malware that tapped voice calls and monitored user activity. Although this vulnerability was fixed quickly, it serves as a reminder that despite robust security measures, there is always the threat of a security risk. As such, having a proactive plan to address digital threats ahead of any event is critical. Riskonnect is helping organizations take care of risk management proactively across the entire organization so that they have a clear view of both operational and strategic risks. Without this visibility, it is impossible for risk managers to account for threats arising from new technologies in the market. Moving forward, Riskonnect is focusing on developing innovative solutions to combat enterprise risk. “We continue to expand and refine our products and services to give our customers the clearest view of risk across the enterprise,” concludes Wetekamp.

- Joe Phillip
July 04, 2019