Integrating Technology Risk Management into Business Planning

Thanks to the rising competition and constantly changing economic scenario, business planning is no longer a one-time exercise. Regular reviews and revisions of the goals as well as the means to achieve the objectives are becoming increasingly important in business planning. For startup businesses, planning involves a bouquet of careful approach to walk through the uncertainties. Business planning for existing enterprises entails disciplined strategies that support sustainability efforts to steer ahead with goals. While business planning for both the types involves multitude of unique activities, integrating technology risk management into the overall framework is of paramount importance for both business types.

Why to adopt technology risk management

In the present scenario of risks acquiring new forms to negatively impact business performance, enterprises – big or small, startups or existing – must embed technology risk management into business planning. As business planning involves a number of disparate elements that require relentless realignment, the use of technology allows greater control. While these factors vary from business to business and give rise to risks unique to the industry, they also vary depending upon the enterprise size, its strategies, its goals and the ways the business performs.

To avoid greater complexity and ensure a streamlined process, business planning should view risks either as internal or external. While internal risks arise because of the way the function, external threats come from factors businesses have no or little control over. However, to ascertain sustaining business in the risk-intensive world, it is imperative for enterprises to develop strategies to confront and counter both internal and external risks, by integrating technology risk management into business planning. These strategies must continue to evolve alongside reviews and revisions of business planning.

Moving forward with technology

Surprisingly, there are establishments that plan to move forward by implementing a spreadsheet based approach. These institutions fail to see that capturing planning information with manual input is cumbersome and time consuming in addition to being mistake-prone. As the business moves forward, a technological approach acquires greater significance. The use of traditional applications like this offer some analytical benefits at an early stage. They cannot substitute an advanced application that comes with innovative features, offer a vast array of price points and can be accessed at geographically distributed locations.

Incorporating an efficient technology risk management framework affords competitive advantage to drive faster growth and greater innovation. In addition to identifying and mitigating financial, operational and regulatory risks, the adoption of technology risk management approach enables enterprises to stay prepared for any unforeseen risk events that could potentially devastate the business by draining finances and ruining reputation. Technology-driven principles allow institutions to acquire foreknowledge of potential threats, thereby allowing managing the risk well, transferring it or forestalling it, depending on the organization’s risk appetite as well as the industry it belongs to.

Reaping prolonged benefits

While a mature technological tool that could be used to its utmost potential enables the integration of all elements involved in business planning, reaping prolonged benefits of integrating technology risk management into business planning depend on some more factors. They include: Risk identification, early integration of technology, resource allocation, continuous evaluation and proactive risk mitigation.

Among the common challenges to risk assessment, threat identification plays a critical role because just as internal and external risks to a business are of numerous types, so are risks specific to the business type both due to belonging to particular industry and because of the ways the business performs its functions. The process of risk identification, in addition to detecting the risks themselves, must identify the vulnerable processes and systems, the failure of which disrupts operations.

Technology tools embedded early into the overall IT infrastructure prove to be more beneficial as they allow better integration, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. Often cost-effective, they are useful than those superimposed on existing structures. Being well accepted, they help early avoidance, transference, and mitigation of risk events. Resource allocation refers to earmarking the necessary funds to procure IT systems and their up-gradation. It also includes hiring competent employees and entrusting the most significant responsibility to the most adequate employee.

Dealing with risk requires an acceptance that it never goes away. Continuous evaluation of systems and procedures allows businesses to detect risks early, before any damage is done. Continuous assessment helps to evaluate a business’ stance on procedures and controls. This, in turn, ensures regulatory compliance, by prioritizing public safety and operations maintenance. Adequate integration of technology risk management into business planning works as an enabler of proactive risk mitigation. Proactive risk management, as opposed to a protective approach, unmasks the actual threat and resolves it. Integration of technology risk management principles serve as a building block for business planning to lead to business continuity.

Risk Management Studio is a risk management software toolkit combining IT risk management and business continuity management into one easy use solution. RM Studio is a turnkey deployment design that will immediately streamline the operational risk management for the implementation and maintenance of an effective and efficient ISMS, as well as meet the compliance requirements outlined in management standards such as ISO 27001:2013 and PCI DSS 3.0.