Key to ISO 31000 Success – Theme 4: Leverage Existing Resources
Another possible barrier to initiating an Enterprise Risk Management process may be the view that significant resources including investments or outside expertise are needed to undertake an Enterprise Risk Management project. For example, some directors or senior executives might think that they would need to hire an experienced Chief Risk Officer or make significant investments in new technologies or automated tools.
Such a viewpoint could prove to be a significant barrier to smaller organizations, in particular, which might have a strong desire to move ahead with Enterprise Risk Management but have limited resources for making it happen. Many organizations have successfully entered the Enterprise Risk Management arena by leveraging their existing risk management resources.
Organizations often discover that they have the personnel on their existing staffs, with the knowledge and capabilities relating to risks and risk management that can be effectively used to start. For example, some organizations have used their Chief Audit Executive or their Chief Financial Officer as the catalyst to begin an Enterprise Risk Management initiative. In other instances, organizations have appointed a management committee, sometimes headed by their Chief Finance Office (CFO), to bring together a wide array of personnel from across the entity who collectively have sufficient knowledge of the organization’s core business model and related risks and risk management practices to get Enterprise Risk Management moving.
In addition, most organizations start their Enterprise Risk Management effort without any specific enabling technology or automated tools other than basic spreadsheets and word-processing capabilities.