An essential part of risk management is contingency planning and business continuity management. Alongside protecting your business from risks day in and day out, ERM software leverages existing knowledge of threats and vulnerabilities to prepare risk controls in advance – this includes preparing contingency plans for natural disasters and crises.
Importance
The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed how organizations interact with employees, customers and data. With more and more employees choosing to work remotely, networks that were once closed and secure have become vulnerable and difficult to monitor. Add to that the rapid growth of IoT (internet of things) devices, and you have already been exposed to cyberattacks from a dozen different fronts.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, cybercrime has increased by 600% in the public and private sectors. As a result, risk management software and, by association, enterprise risk management software have become the need of the hour.
While no ERM software is 100% effective, it can significantly soften the blow of attacks and ensure your company’s ability to meet objectives is not compromised.
Primary Benefits
The benefits of ERM software are not just limited to specialized risk management services. This section will discuss some of its direct and indirect advantages:
Standardize All Risk Management Processes
Implement a consistent risk assessment process across multiple business areas. With customizable templates, you can ensure the risk register records all the information necessary to make risk-aware decisions.
Having all the relevant data in hand makes the job easier for your risk owners. It provides the insight necessary to find a balance between your company’s risk tolerance and risk appetite. Understanding the source of risk is the first step to defeating them.
Improve Regulatory Compliance
While not exclusive to ERM software, compliance management is one of its most important benefits. As a manager, it can become exceedingly difficult to track every single law and regulatory change that affects your company. However, there’s little room for error when it comes to compliance.
ERM solutions make it easier to track regulations that directly affect your company’s activities in and out of the country. Minimize incidents of noncompliance and set up workflows to identify and correct existing projects falling out of compliance.
Anticipate and Mitigate Risk Proactively
ERM software is your company’s early warning system for all kinds of risks. With the help of predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), you can identify and resolve vulnerabilities before they can pose a threat to your business.
The system works in tandem with existing risk tolerance thresholds to red flag potential vulnerabilities and prepares a viable remediation strategy. This ensures faster risk response rates and uninterrupted service.
While the nature of these risks will differ from industry to industry, the importance of an early warning system cannot be overstated.
Plan Ahead and Ensure Business Continuity
One lesson we can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic – regardless of how meticulously we plan, some things will always be out of our control. Even though this can be a scary thought, we must account for the unknown when planning for the future.
ERM software can run simulations to predict the potential impact of natural disasters and crises. You can use this data to set up business continuity plans, assign task ownership and record risk controls for “what if” scenarios.
Business continuity plans ensure your organization suffers minimum interruptions even in the face of unexpected crises.
