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Risk Insider: Bob Morrell
Risk Technology: Risk Managers Lead from Within
Bob Morrell is CEO and Co-Founder of Riskonnect. He oversees the strategic vision and strategy of Riskonnect, a provider of risk management technology. Bob hones his competitive skills practicing mixed martial arts, along with his family. Bob can be reached at [email protected].
This year marks my twentieth in the risk management field. Now I would never call myself a risk manager. Far from it: I’m a computer geek, and proud of it. Today we refer to the Internet, Cloud, Mobile and Big Data, but I’ve been working with technology my entire life. So much has changed in those twenty years. Networking computers together was rudimentary and extremely limited when I started. Now everything, and everyone, is interconnected, and that has changed everything.
That interconnectivity has allowed organizations to move away from the isolated, siloed processes of the past, and produced dramatic changes in the way we conduct our business and our lives. I’ve watched risk management evolve from a department called upon primarily when things go wrong, to a pervasive philosophy for running a successful business. Fewer and fewer risk managers I speak to work in isolation, reacting to claims as they come in. Rather they are a collaborative lynchpin to manage risk. They don’t wait for bad things to happen. They proactively put safety programs in place, analyze loss data and make their organizations more risk-aware. They know an enormous amount about the inner workings of their organization, its suppliers, distributors, vendors and team members. This is a fundamental transition from a middle management, administrative function, to an executive level function that is key to the organization’s success.
But risk managers are increasingly finding that email and spreadsheets are clumsy, inefficient, and ultimately create obstacles to managing risk throughout their company. With the speed and global reach of business, when even ‘local’ businesses rely on a far-flung supply chain, yesterday’s technology introduces risk, inefficiencies and increased levels of error. Today’s business demands technology that facilitates decisions for tomorrow’s business challenges. Organizations need a platform – a platform that provides secure, efficient and consistent methods of communicating risk-related events and data. Fortunately this need comes at a time when we have a convergence of technologies that can make this vision a reality.
This is a fundamental transition from a middle management, administrative function, to an executive level function that is key to the organization’s success.
Just imagine running your business on technology of twenty years ago. Sending paper memos (when CC referred to a literal ‘carbon copy’), using a phone tethered to your desk, taking delivery of policy documents in hard copy – oh wait, they still do that. Would that put your business at a competitive disadvantage? Of course it would – and risk management would suffer too.
Risk management no longer has to take a back seat to other parts of the organization. Quite the opposite. By leveraging commercial cloud platforms, the pervasiveness of the Internet and the interconnectivity of everyone and everything, the risk management team can be the most modern, forward-looking part of the company. Risk management has become the bellwether of change – actually bearing the standard for technology-enabled collaboration and productivity across the organization. Imagine that.
