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Poole College of Management
Enterprise Risk Management Initiative

All Resources

Sep 1, 2013

Preparing for a Black Swan Event

Black Swan events are traditionally thought to be rare, random, and high-impact events, but recent history suggests that Black Swan events are happening more frequently while maintaining their unpredictability and catastrophic characteristics. A recent thought paper by Ernst & Young explains the benefit of preparing for a Black Swan event, identifies broad-based principles to implement prior to an event, and describes protocols to follow when responding to the event. Due to a Black Swan’s unpredictability, a flexible and broad-based approach to prepare and respond to such an event is necessary to mitigate its impact and facilitate a speedy recovery. The paper provides valuable insights to help your enterprise prepare for the unexpected.

Jun 19, 2013

Risk Culture’s Critical Role in ERM

Enterprise risk management is a matter of business process, but it is important to remember the part that people play in implementing ERM. An organization’s “risk culture,” the way an organization’s personnel collectively view, communicate about, and respond to risk, can make or break an otherwise well-designed ERM process. In this May 2013 article from McKinsey & Company, authors Alexis Krivkovich and Cindy Levy discuss risk culture and its critical role in effective ERM. The authors describe the key characteristics of a healthy risk culture, and they also highlight two challenges that organizations must be mindful of in developing risk culture

Jun 19, 2013

ERP Implementation Risk: Managing Sources of Project Delays and Other Risk

Over the past two decades, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have allowed managers to utilize software to integrate information about projects across the enterprise. These systems are designed to integrate internal and external information, enhance the flow of communication and decision-making across an enterprise, and focus on business processes and functions. However, integrating information about operations all across an enterprise to make information more accessible and flow via an ERP system presents a number of significant risks. If issues arise at inopportune moments, they are compounded due to the interrelated nature of an ERP system. Protiviti developed a whitepaper that identifies and reiterates the importance of mitigating these risks to reduce post-implementation project costs.

Jun 11, 2013

Focusing on Property Risk Management

Risk events such as fires, adverse weather conditions, and terrorist attacks can have devastating effects on an organization's facilities and physical infrastructure. If ineffectively managed, core operations can be paralyzed, assets can be destroyed, and key IP may be compromised. In May 2013, Advisen Ltd. conducted a large survey of risk managers and property brokers in order to gain perspective on the status of property risk management efforts among businesses operating in the United States and abroad. The survey asked questions around two main themes: 1) what are companies doing, if anything, to specifically manage threats to the physical property and resources of the business, and 2) what are the key characteristics and practices of successful property risk managers? This white paper provides an overview of the survey and its results, which may provide useful benchmarking data for risk leaders.

Apr 1, 2013

Crowdsourcing, A Tool to Tackle Emerging Strategic Risks

Organizations are turning to “crowdsourcing” as part of their innovation strategy where they leverage the knowledge of “the crowd” to identify emerging trends and opportunities. A recent article in _Harvard Business Review_ highlights crowdsourcing as a problem solving technique. We use that as a springboard to explore how crowdsourcing might be used to leverage the collective talent of the crowd to help organizations deter or manage emerging risks that may affect their strategic success. Crowdsourcing may be a tool that risk leaders can include in their risk identification toolkits.

Apr 1, 2013

Five Basics to Managing Innovation Risk

As organizations seek growth through value creation, they often invest in research and development to generate innovations that can propel significant changes and new demand in the marketplace. In the rush to capitalize on the benefits of emerging innovations, organizations often rush to the market based without thinking through the limitations in the models upon which they have based their decision to act. Said differently, innovation carries risks that need to adequately evaluated. A recent Harvard Business Review article by Nobel prize winner, Robert Merton proposes that businesses should adopt five rules of thumb before haphazardly introducing innovations into the market.

Mar 1, 2013

Demystifying Risk Appetite

The enterprise risk management (ERM) community is certainly aware of the idea of “risk appetite;” however, despite the attention that risk appetite receives from ERM practitioners, it remains an elusive concept to apply at the enterprise level. In this article from the Spring 2012 issue of Corporate Risk Canada, author Rob Quail, long-time Director of ERM at Canadian utility Hydro One Inc., attempts to explain and cut through the confusion surrounding risk appetite. Quail also walks through a fresh methodology for defining and measuring risk appetite that can help organizations to make better, more consistent business decisions.

Mar 1, 2013

Strategies to Manage Risks of Sudden Competitor Disruptions

The introduction of new business models such as cloud computing, apps for model devices, instant information sharing, and free trial of service offerings have suddenly disrupted business models for a number of organizations. The way in which disruptions to an organization’s core business now emerges is often different from how new competitors have emerged in the past, which thereby calls for new ways to manage the risk of disruptive innovations. A recent Harvard Business Review article addresses these issues by focusing on what has changed in this context and how risk managers can better plan for the unknown. The cliché “time is of the essence” could never be more true for planning ahead to mitigate the impact of major market disruptions in what the authors call “big bang” disruptions. They offer strategies and identification techniques to help managers pursue planning for a disruptive environment.

Feb 13, 2013

Strengthening the Role of the Chief Risk Officer in an Organization

The role of chief risk officer (CRO) has been put under a microscope to understand methods and key success factors that can enhance the role. Organizations now, more than ever before, are appointing CROs to improve their risk function and better manage potential risks that could impede their strategy. To achieve that, the CRO must be placed in a position that is fundamental as well as instrumental in the decision-making and strategy-setting process. This Protiviti white paper provides six key critical success factors that organizations should be aware of and promote to ensure that their organization is in a better risk management position than in the past.

Dec 21, 2012

Making the Connection Between Strategy-setting and Risk

Organizations invest a great deal of effort in developing and executing their business strategies. Even so, winning business models are all-too-often subject to catastrophic failures in the blink of an eye. Didn't these companies see trouble coming? The answer: probably not, but only because executive managers did not think hard enough about risk during the strategy-setting process. This white paper from Protiviti Inc. explores the concept of strategic risk and provides an approach for incorporating risk assessment into the process of strategy-setting. By combining these processes, managers will be better equipped to make decisions for their organizations now and in the unknown future.