The professional risk management software for analyses, evaluation and controlling of risks

In this first step, collect all individual risks (e.g. by using a ticketing tool), but do not yet evaluate or categorize these events. This is merely an unsorted, uncategorized listing. Each individual risk is linked to existing assets. Assets are, for example, hardware, software, licenses, contracts, buildings, employees, machines, processes etc. To obtain the most comprehensive portfolio of influencing potential factors, you should consider all of the following types of impact:

• Finances (damage/loss or potential for saving resources)
• Reputation (threats or opportunities in relation to the reputation of your company)
• Projects (events that endanger or favor the successful completion of a project)
• Health & environment (legal requirements and protection of your employees)

Analyze the individual risks listed in step 1 according to at least these criteria:

• Estimated impact on your company and on the achievement of your goals (e.g. amount of financial loss, impact on the successful progress of a project, loss of reputation, health risks to your employees)
• Estimated or calculated probability of occurrence of the event (e.g. rare, unlikely, possible, likely, fairly certain). How often has a comparable event occurred in the last year, the last three, five or ten years?
• Classification into defined risk categories: The risk landscape, i.e. the total of all individual risks, is unique for each company. Consequently, the risk categories into which the individual risks are classified also vary depending on the size and form of the organization and its industry. A few categories (such as fire protection or HR) are present in almost all organizations. Categories can be further subdivided into different levels, i.e. scaled.

The allocation to individual categories results into specific responsibilities for each individual risk. Once the probability of occurrence and the extent of damage have finally been determined, the responsible person determines which risk strategy is to be pursued for each individual risk (see step 4). 

Important: When examining individual risks and their structure, you will also identify opportunities for improvement and resource saving. For this reason, analyze all the influencing factors listed, even if at first glance you consider their negative influences to be harmless, improbable or irrelevant.

By using the authorized information from step 2, form a grid with the probability of occurrence on one axis and the potential impact on achieving your goals on the other axis. Use this risk matrix to derive the priorities of your risk plan. Start with the risks which cause the greatest potential damage or have the greatest probability of occurrence—and move on to the less likely and less harmful risks. As part of our customizing process, we create a tailor-made, clickable risk matrix, which gives you a simple overview of your risk assessments.

In order to make optimum use of the risk matrix, you define criteria for which individual risks you execute concrete risk strategies and for which you do not. For example, you determine that you always take care of the five individual risks with the highest priority, and, at the same time, you take care of all risks with a potential damage exceeding 100,000 euros.

An efficient implementation and control of the individual and overall processes of all risks can only be achieved with a precisely defined plan of measures and time schedule for these strategies. The risk management software ensures the execution. A breakdown into the following risk strategy types is common:

• Risk avoidance: Reducing the probability of occurrence by discontinuing risky processes or replacing them with less risky processes
• Risk reduction: Minimize the extent of damage
• Risk transfer: Outsourcing risks, e.g. by means of insurance in the event of damage
• Risk acceptance: Accepting risks if, for example, the probability is extremely low or, in the case of occurrence, the damage is small and therefore acceptable

Analyze the success of all sub-steps and regularly adapt your catalog of measures and risk strategies to the general conditions or to your internal processes. If necessary, also vary the methods you use to collect and evaluate your risks. The more standardized your risk management processes are, the better their quality and efficiency will be.

After implementing a risk strategy, the corresponding individual risk must be analyzed again and finally evaluated (step 2). This is the only way to evaluate the success of your implemented measures. As part of professional quality management, you should document the goals of your measures and compare them with the results actually achieved.

1. An employee recognizes a risk in the company, e.g. a workflow that is error-prone.
2. This employee creates a ticket and thus draws attention to this danger.
3. The employee estimates the probability of occurrence, the potential extent of damage and categorizes the risk.
4. The responsible person for this category now makes a final assessment of the risk and determines how it should be dealt with.
5. A risk strategy is selected and implemented according to priority. Appropriate measures are initiated as required.
6. If concrete strategies are executed, their success is (regularly) evaluated and the risk is analyzed and assessed again.

For example, IT service management helps to quickly eliminate existing incidents and keep their effects as low as possible. The structured evaluation of all incidents and service requests is the basis for taking efficient measures to avoid risks on a small scale or to keep their effects in total as low as possible. A ticketing system also supports you in recording or collecting risk reports.

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Risks can endanger the successful completion of projects. Therefore, it makes sense to perform software-based risk assessments before and during projects. In modern software ecosystems—such as the Business Process Ecosystem OMNITRACKER—all digital information structures are linked together and access the same database. This leads to smooth workflows, a lower error rate and more planning reliability. OMNITRACKER Risk Management is compatible with the OMNITRACKER Project Management Center as well as with all other OMNITRACKER applications. Our project management software meets all relevant standards and is PRINCE2 certified.

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Modern BPMN processes indirectly contribute to better identifying risks within sub-steps of processes and then eliminating them. By modelling business processes (as preparation for later automation), a company takes a close look at its process structure. This leads to more transparency, which in turn helps to identify weaknesses (i.e. risk factors) within workflows. Risk measures are automated and executed error-free with BPMN, which saves resources and minimizes the risk of application errors.

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