Risk transformation is one of the most compelling aspects of your organization’s financial digital transformation. Regardless of where you are in your transformation, there are three steps you can put in place right now to improve your journey, even before you change or implement new technology.
1. Focus on Big Picture Risk, Not One-off Violations
One-off violations lead to endless frustrations for both processors and employees. There are a lot of unique situations that require exceptions but drilling down on every single one of these can be time consuming. It also prevent you from focusing on the real risk that exists within your spend programs. Besides that, it can create unnecessary employee conflict and a feeling of tension and mistrust.
So, what should your focus be? Most of your employees are great people doing great things. Out of all the spend that Oversight has analyzed over the years, we’ve observed that about 70% of employees are perfectly in compliance at all times. Except for major infractions that may still require a one-off investigation, a more effective approach to auditing for non-compliance behavior is to focus on patterns.
Focusing on patterns allows you to take a long-term view and hone in on the population that habitually engages in non-compliant behavior. Doing so changes the dynamic of interaction—it empowers you to have more informed conversations with employees and to address the root cause of issues rather than every single, little infraction.
2. Break Down Departmental Silos and Solve for the Enterprise
Risk extends beyond any single finance program or function. Single point solutions that only meet the needs of one area fail the larger objective and ultimately contribute to more silos in an organization, creating inefficiencies that weren’t previously there and leaving you worse off.
Instead, you need to solve for risk across the enterprise. Controls should meet the needs of disparate finance functions and all interested stakeholders to ensure continuity on the risk spectrum and optimize your workload. But how do you accomplish this?
Through a coalition of willing employees, you can engage stakeholders that span different functional areas and play vital roles in mitigating risk. Traditionally these groups are found in frontline operational teams, internal audit/investigations, and compliance departments.
3. Don’t Let Your Current Workflow Constrain Your View of the Possible
As you look to apply technology to transform your organization, you can’t limit your scope to the world of today. Current workflows were designed with the constraint of manual intervention, often less than ideal but necessary to accommodate the human element. Today, we live in a world of AI and automation. Putting these solutions in place can and should change your workflow. When technology does more of the heavy lifting in identifying and analyzing risk, you need to rethink your processes. Focus on designing workflows around outcomes and only the human touch where it’s necessary.
The Bottom Line
By changing your mindset and approach to risk mitigation, you can place yourself on the right path early and get a jumpstart on successfully moving into the digital age. In fact, check out this case study and learn how one Fortune 500 company saved millions with an end-to-end financial risk transformation.
