IDENTIFYING AND REDUCING RISK

To a greater or lesser extent, there is risk associated with almost any activity. Risks may be categorised as financial, legal, or safety related. In whichever form it appears, risk is detrimental to business and should therefore be minimised wherever possible. Large businesses will typically take specific advice from legal professionals who will identify and analyse risk, before constructing a strategy of how to mitigate that risk, and what to do in the event of something happening.

Registered compliance agencies exist here in the UK that offer services such as risk management and enterprise risk management. Risk management is a process that identifies risks associated with a particular business, determining the cause and effects of that risk, and then implementing a course of action to mitigate it. Identification of business risk can be a complex task, and often involves existential factors. After identification and analysis, a projection of business losses can be calculated to determine the impact of said risk. Presented with the risk management assessment, businesses can then adopt new strategies to overcome or reduce the risk.

Enterprise risk management differs from risk management, in that it focuses on identifying strategic and operational risks within the enterprise that could affect the business, with a heavier emphasis on strategic planning, innovation and marketing. A technical example of this might be as follows; for security reasons an IT department creates multiple sub-links for a webpage. The potential risk in this instance could be that it leads to web users becoming frustrated and then disengaging with the website.

Business case development seeks to establish the reasons for initiating a project. A business case development plan is employed to obtain management support and approval for further investment. Business cases are typically presented as well structured written documents.

Acufire is a fully authorised and highly respected compliance agency in the UK, offering a plethora of bespoke services concerned with risk management, enterprise risk management and business case development. Acufire’s operational team consists of accredited engineers who are well versed with compliance and have a wealth of quality business risk analysis experience.