Risk intelligence: Make your next big move with confidence

By Julie Lev, Director, ERP Cloud Product Marketing, Oracle

Pivots to growth are happening everywhere as companies move toward recovery. Business leaders are making big moves, such as launching new products and services, expanding through mergers and acquisitions, and raising cash for new opportunities with divestitures.

Undoubtedly, many of these companies will meet obstacles along the way to brighter futures, but those with a risk-intelligent culture will be able to seize opportunities and weather storms without compromising security or their financial integrity. 

What is a risk-intelligent culture?

A risk-intelligent culture is one that aligns IT, finance, operations and audit around an organization’s most critical risks—promoting a culture of risk-intelligence where risks are connected to strategic outcomes.  In order to accomplish this, organizations must pivot from a legacy approach to risk management—one that is task-focused with disconnected security, risk, and audit functions—to a risk-based approach where these functions are not only linked, but embedded in critical ERP business processes. Companies can make time-critical, risk-aware business decisions and foster a collaborative culture of risk identification and mitigation.

Efficient and effective: Necessary components for risk-intelligence

There are many solutions that automate security, risk, and audit. Automation helps to ensure efficiencies, replacing manual, labor-intensive activities. However, automation is not the only component needed to support a risk intelligent culture.  Risk strategies and solutions must also be effective.  Effective strategies and solutions are proactive—not reactive—helping your organization identify potential risks at points of origins for immediate awareness and coordinated response. 

Effective risk management requires:

• Embedded risk intelligence in critical ERP business processes. Bolt-on risk management solutions that require data to be extracted from an organization’s most critical application (its ERP) to analyze security, risk, and audit increases—not decreases—security vulnerabilities. These solutions can compromise data integrity and create time lags in identifying potentially damaging situations. Data extractions are not only time-consuming, but reactive, providing a less-than-complete assessment of risk.
• AI/ML (advanced analytics) for real-time continuous monitoring and analysis. As the volume of data that organizations must consume and analyze increases at unprecedented rates, advanced technologies like AI and machine learning are required for risk identification and mitigation. Without the advantages of AI-driven continuous monitoring and analysis, security, risk and audit functions become over-extended. This increases the chances of mistakes, making it difficult to use the data to help drive risk-based actions or decisions that can impact business.  This cycle influences an organization’s appetite for undertaking big moves due to an erosion of trust and confidence.  It not only impedes transformation progress but also leaves potentially huge gaps in security.  
• A single source of enterprise truth through a shared risk repository. With a centralized risk repository, organizations can implement a scalable, centralized approach for risk intelligence, supporting collaboration and information sharing among control owners and governance teams.  All risks, policies and controls are documented in a single risk repository, with separate access for auditors.  IT, finance, operations and audit can add value to the continuous assessment of controls through monitoring, testing, re-evaluation and certification.  Security, risk, and audit no longer act as disconnected teams, all making critical decisions based on data that can be inconsistent, unreliable, and not current. 

Oracle Risk Management and Compliance: Risk intelligence for growth

When you use Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, the path to a risk-intelligent culture is easier because Oracle Risk Management and Compliance is embedded and purpose-built for it.  

Security, risk, and audit controls are embedded in Cloud ERP processes.  And, working off of the same “single source of truth,” IT, finance, operations and audit are connected functions. They can support ongoing change while maintaining control and providing a continuous, collaborative cycle for organized risk prevention and response. Employees can make risk-aware decisions as part of their everyday work.  Preventing and managing risk becomes a fluid part of common tasks, such as paying suppliers and processing invoices.  And, with AI-driven continuous monitoring and analysis of security, financial transactions, configurations, and audit data, organizations can identify risks and take action faster, averting disastrous outcomes like hefty fines, cyberattacks, damage to your reputation, and a negative impact to your bottom line.

By aligning around enterprise risks—cyber, regulatory, financial and operational—organizations can provide the solid risk foundation necessary to undertake big moves and function as a synchronized team. You can:

• Benefit from 24x7 AI-driven, continuous security and audit monitoring
• Reduce the risk of fraud and cash leaks
• Enforce separation of duties (SOD) and prevent external audit failures
• Prevent unauthorized access to your critical ERP processes
• Audit 100% of ERP transactions and configurations
• Quickly adapt to ever-changing security, regulatory and compliance imperatives
• Streamline SOX compliance by eliminating spreadsheet- and email-based tasks

Read our starter kit to learn best practices and take the first steps.