What is enterprise risk management (ERM)?

Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a framework for managing organizational risk. Organizational risk is a broad term. It can encompass concerns ranging from ensuring employee safety and securing sensitive data to meeting statutory regulations and stopping financial fraud. Risk can be internal, such as equipment malfunctions, or external, such as natural disasters. What is considered risk varies from one entity to another.

Managing risk is traditionally viewed as minimizing harm to the value the organization creates for itself, employees, shareholders, customers, and the community. Every enterprise decides what it perceives as a risk to the organization and performs some form of risk assessment. An ERM framework is a set of principles and procedures that help the organization manage anticipated risks so that it can successfully achieve its objectives.

In this sense, risk management solutions do two things: protect the enterprise from harm and create opportunities to improve business performance.

Properly managing risk helps enable business continuity. Business continuity management (BCM) is related to ERM. BCM is a management process that businesses use to identify potential threats and plan ahead in case those threats are realized, making sure the company can deliver on its obligations to customers, suppliers, and employees.

A modern view of enterprise risk management is that it should help you increase the likelihood of meeting your organizational objectives rather than simply compiling a list of potential issues.

We take the approach that risk management software is about more than simply protecting your assets. It’s about building a risk-aware culture so that your employees can take the most informed actions and make the best decisions. Our mission is to enable risk management solutions that are always on, unified, coordinated, and aligned with your business.