Compusearch
Software Quickly Brings More Effective Risk Management to DoD, Intel, and Civilian Agencies

DoD, Intel, and Civilian agency leaders achieve their missions through $100 billion supply chains, millions of employees, and tens of thousands of contractors. Since there are countless risks that things won’t go as planned, it’s tempting to become preoccupied with risks - too risk averse and plodding. But that’s not what effective leaders do.

Compusearch, the premier provider of Effective Risk Management (ERM) software to federal agencies and programs, helps leaders do the right thing: Quickly understand and mitigate risks.

One of the dozens of effective risk managers that use RISKvue within their ERM process is the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems Directorate (ICBMSD). ICBMSD’s award-winning ERM program has enabled the program to become even more proactive, and has done so with a tenth of the staff that would otherwise be required. The program efficiently maintains a structured array of accurate risk information that enables faster, better resource allocation decisions and increases risk agility.

“RISKvue makes it easy for our nation’s leaders to become and remain effective risk managers,” says Paul Edelmann, Compusearch’s Vice President of Product Management and former Executive Director of the largest group of Chief Risk Officers from big organizations who gather to discuss challenges and best practices.

According to Edelmann, successful leaders like ICBMSD follow ERM best practices. That is, they:

1. Identify the risks that are most likely to graduate to issues and would cause the most damage if they graduated to issues;
2. Reduce residual risk via mitigation plans for the biggest risks;
3. Assign executive sponsors and resources to each mitigation plan;
4. Discuss progress during executive team meetings.

“The four basic steps sound like no-brainers. But anyone who’s been part of sizable risk management efforts knows that the volume of risk related information becomes intractable. Gathering and framing it becomes tedious, particularly for senior managers who have many other critical demands on their time. Often the effort becomes a ‘check the box’, episodic exercise led by consultants who aren’t accountable for the risks and eventually leave with important knowledge,” explains Edelmann.

RISKvue makes it easy for our nation’s leaders to become and remain effective risk managers

RISKvue provides program leaders and subject matter experts a thorough, tractable, proven approach to surfacing, mitigating, and reporting program risks. Based on DAU Risk Process maps, RISKvue addresses pressing, critical challenges including difficulty identifying and validating top risks; difficulty determining, resourcing and tracking appropriate mitigation approaches; and time consuming, duplicative efforts to generate and update briefing charts.

Vital to the success of an ERM program is shared ownership by executives, as opposed to an implied delegation to one executive – PM/DPM, CFO, CRO or otherwise. Consequently, one of the primary reasons RISKvue was selected by CIOReview as an award winner is its ease of use. Within minutes, executives are able to tap into a central repository of structured risk information, use color-coding to draw attention to key risks, and automatically generate briefing charts including the standard 5x5 grid. They can easily set severity and probability thresholds, and quickly report by IPT, program, risk factor, risk level, and validation status. Most importantly, they can readily create, prioritize, and track the impact of mitigation plans.

When asked what’s next for RISKvue, Edelmann explained, “We’re looking forward to helping several DoD programs who’ve decided to retire an old risk tool. We’re also working with Civilian CFOs who in response to updates to OMB Circular A-123 need to substantially upgrade their ERM processes. We continue to work with those on the leading edge of risk management – and so we are adding capabilities related to risk velocity, risk agility, grimlets, and black swans.”

RISKvue is a strong choice for DoD, Intel, and Civilian leaders who need (a) to readily understand top and emerging risks, (b) track mitigation plans, and (c) meet budget constraints.