One of the most crucial issues for businesses right now is managing risk. After all, risk, if left unchecked, can be a serious drain on budgets and assets. While risk comes in all shapes and sizes, identifying which incidents cause the biggest danger to your company is critical to protecting your business. Let's consider the possible economic ramifications of risk on business operation:

Safety issues. Carefully monitoring spills, for example, can avoid the huge costs that could be associated with a single slip-and-fall liability claim.

Equipment failures and fire hazards. Overseeing equipment operation and being attentive to possible fire hazards are common-sense ways to avoid disaster.

Workplace violence. Effective security measures and visitor management, along with well-understood emergency response protocols, can prevent such random events – and/or minimize their impact.

Human resources issues. A combination of employee education along with specific procedures and systematic response protocols will help manage costs.

Compliance violations. Enforcing compliance, company policies and industry standards should be accompanied by thorough follow up and corrective action.

Accidents and injuries. Rapid reporting to a pre-selected company incident management team and a well-planned response are always important.

Property theft. Employee theft can be very costly to any business, so prevention and the implementation of effective counter measures to prevent future trouble are critical components to risk management strategies.

As you can see from the short list above, risk can impact every department within a company. All functional areas within an organization from security, facilities, HR, legal, safety, and compliance − at some point, are impacted by risk and its cost.

So, it’s important that the security industry evolves to help customers find solutions to risk management and at the same time be highly resilient when a disaster or emergency does happen. Programs andsystems should be in place to ensure a timely response to any event with a combination of manpower and technology. Supplementing security officers – and enabling them to act in real-time using hand-held communication devices creates a good start to a comprehensive risk mitigation plan. But pressures in today’s business environment may require additional technology, such as risk management software, to provide a full and comprehensive view of incidents and their true costs.

Some risk management software solutions can be expensive, difficult to use and may not meet the needs of everyone within a company or the unique business environment.  So, it’s very important to find incident management software that’s easy-to-use and cost effective to help with the full life cycle of risk management starting from: capturing complete information at the time of the initial event, tracking incidents to their closures, providing secure digital data storage and analyzing if and when counter measures are working. Risk management software can also help document and record all important compliance initiatives.

Before making a decision on purchasing new incident management software or replacing an outdated system, companies may want to ask three simple questions to help clarify your company’s unique business needs and ultimately help find the best solution.

• How does your company currently capture incident data and are managers notified in real-time?
• How does your company gather incident data for reports? And then how is that data stored and is it secure?
• How does your company currently analyze corrective measures to truly know if your efforts are helping to mitigating risk, lower costs or maintain compliance?

Businesses face a constant balancing act between risk expense and risk mitigation measures. However, managing risk effectively doesn’t always have to be expensive. Sometimes implementing a comprehensive security solution using a combination of manpower and technology can minimize risk without costing a lot. Companies who aren’t looking at risk mitigation techniques may find some of the least costly incidents, when left unchecked actually lead to expensive consequences.

As companies build a database of incidents, managers can begin to see trends and identify areas to optimize. So, it’s essential in today’s complex business environment for companies, both large and small, to have a comprehensive risk management process that combines the best security officers with case management technology to support a continuous process of improvement and analysis to reveal potential risks, help reduce costs and mitigate compliance exposures.