Risk Surveys Provide a Clear Picture of Your Organization's Risks:

Every organization faces its own set of risks, some of which are known but not necessarily quantified or understood, and others that are hidden. Risk surveys are a highly cost-effective way to identify and quantify risks by gathering information, perceptions and insight from managers across an organization.

Risk management surveys force managers at all levels of the organization to think about a wide range of possible risks. Our risk survey approach includes identifying risks by business unit and location and for the organization overall.

Case Study - Illustrative Risk Mitigation Survey Findings:

A business risk survey was recently conducted for a U.S. consumer products company doing business worldwide. The risk management survey / risk mitigation survey quantified risk likelihood and potential risk impact for over 75 specific risks. Almost 100% of Board members, senior and mid-level managers participated in the enterprise risk survey.

The likelihood of risk incidents occurring and the potential risk impact were assessed separately using quantifiable risk scales. Comments and suggestions were also received for each defined risk type.

Following are the top 10 risks in terms of risk likelihood and potential risk impact respectively:

Risk Likelihood - Top 10 Risks

1 - New Product Development/Salability Risk

2 - Competitor Risk

3 - Capacity Risk

4 - Customer Concentration Risk

5 - Commodity Price Risk

6 - Pricing Risk

7 - Sales Risk

8 - Sourced Product Concentration Risk

9 - Foreign Exchange Risk

10 - Marketing Risk

Risk Impact – Top 10 Risks

1 - Capacity Risk

2 - Sales Risk

3 - New Product Development/Salability Risk

4 - Economic Downturn Risk

5 - Customer Concentration Risk

6 - Alliance Risk

7 - Business Interruption Risk

8 - Foreign Exchange Risk

9 - Sourced Product Concentration Risk

10 - Political Risk

Risk survey comments explain the risks. Risk surveys enable organizations to identify and assess risks, providing a framework for managing and prioritizing risk mitigation initiatives.

Risk Survey Payback:

Risk management surveys cost only a few thousand dollars to conduct, with no disruption to your organization. Depending on your organization's industry, size, location(s) and other factors, Quantisoft's risk survey findings can enable better, informed decisions that reduce risks by millions of dollars.

Illustrative Risk Survey Comments:

Following are illustrative comments selected from well over 1,000 comments and suggestions received from managers and Board members in this risk survey. The comments illustrate some of the types of risks identified and the importance and possible impact of risk incidents:

• PC's and networks are so slow. It is really hurting productivity and our ability to respond to customers.

• I believe we're already seeing customer service risk with the reduction of resources in our customer care center during our most critical time of year. We will not retain customers by having them wait for literally hours on the phone to speak to a customer service rep or wait a week to 10 days to get a response back to an email!

• Given that +30% of our business is transacted with ________, this is constantly a significant risk as they may choose to develop a private label option as a 100% replacement, or replace us with another branded competitor that is offering better pricing, product offering, trade funding, etc.

• The way we are currently taking "confidential" information out from the company is not controlled and is risky - laptops without encryption.

Suppliers come and go to any area inside company - must have zoning system.

• In manufacturing point of view, most of us will try to "hide" the true quality situation just for the sake of a "good" report. If a report is shown as 98% yield which it is actually at 90%, the 8% will definitely lead (mislead) to a poor decision.

• Our data has been questionable leading us to believe we are losing money on some parts of our manufacturing process

• Consumer Behaviors - do we fully appreciate the shift away from TV/Magazines to Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube,..) as a source of information that influences consumer purchases for certain consumer groups???

• Budgets are based on market forecasts and not on the risk assessments. I hope that with this emphasis on risk assessment, we include the outputs of this study in our annual/strategic business plans.

• Small vendors will not do business @ net 60 terms

• Sourced products are almost 100% China based. Should look at alternative country sourcing and have plan to change over if needed.

• 2 key accounts, WM & Target have reduced space year over year and brought in ____________. Their plans with our business are stable but the risk is possible that they eliminate our branded product and replace with their private label brands.

• We continue to build business with suppliers that continue to disappoint. We need to develop a policy that helps our suppliers grow with us or minimizes total business loss if a supplier fails.

• All _______ is made at one site. Adding capability at another location would significantly reduce this risk.

• Minimal visibility in determining if foreign offices have good processes in place to ensure compliance with all laws and regulations.

• As we continue to pull cost and quality out of our products to hit margins, there is a real possibility that consumers lose faith on our products from a quality perspective. Need to continually work with quality standards and reputable suppliers.

• Concerned about the security [or lack thereof] at the _________ facility - minimum wage outsourced security, antiquated or no security systems, cameras etc, no focused internal security contact. Ongoing problems that could hugely impact our success.

• The risk is that too many records are retained resulting in increased risk in any sort of liability claim. Currently, no records retention/disposal process exists. At risk with paper and electronic documents.

• Our former supplier ________ has been distributing our goods improperly. We faced legal issues last year that could possibly happen again.

• In my functional area, salaries are 30% below market comps, which requires "settling" for the best candidate that we can afford, yet the objective is to continually upgrade our talent.

• We still have some people in upper management who choose to manage by fear. That will result in the loss of valued employees.

• No back ups for production & hence greater risks to the most expensive assets of our company.

• We are too soft with security in manufacturing and distribution facilities

• We have been near or at capacity for several years on _______ and ________. Many second and third tier customers have been serviced poorly over that timeframe. I expect we will lose business at these customers if our poor service continues.

• China based suppliers have the potential of going bankrupt - we do not have a good tool to see their financial stability

• We do not have adequate disaster recovery plans for our facilities in the US or overseas and we do not understand the preparedness of our critical suppliers