The Scariest Risk to your Business this Halloween 2019

November 1, 2017

Halloween is here, as always sooner than expected. However this year its not ghosts or ghouls that should keep you up at night, it’s the ever-changing business landscape. With new initiatives happening left right and centre, from Transformation Projects to Innovation strategy sessions to Cyber Security meetings. The scariest thing this Halloween is doing nothing to manage your business risks.

If 2019 has taught us anything its to be aware of three things:

  • Innovation
  • New technology
  • Compliance and Regulatory changes

All of these are a broad stroke terms but are showing the difference between the sheep and the Shepards.

Innovation

If the past few years in business had a keyword it would be “Innovation”. This loosely defined term has left businesses scratching their head over what to do to get ahead of the curb and with the way the world is… You have to! No longer can you rely on simply a good product, with the advancements in new technologies, literally anyone able to set up their own competing business and the ability to outsource manufacturing to cheap labour factories overseas its anyone’s game.

No wonder Innovation has become so popular in the last few years. Its becoming more and more integral for business to maintain/improve market share. In this world where there is so much competition, your organisations needs to find a way to stand out.

“But how can I focus on Innovation when I have a business to run?”

It’s a valid question. The answer isn’t easy. What you CAN do though is focus on the parts of the business that matters and stop focusing on the menial tasks. How can you do this? Sure you could increase staff count, a cheaper option is to focus on new technologies as a business investment rather than a cost.

New Technology

In today’s business landscape what’s becoming clearer is that things are changing, from new computers to business automation software to 3D printers to AI, the list goes on.

There are 3 things though that your business should be focusing on.

  1. Business Automation
  2. AI
  3. Social Media 

Business Automation

As stated above you need to make sure your business is focused on growing the business and not the menial tasks. Automation tools are rapidly expanding in the market with 1000’s of companies across the world, however ensuring you make the right choice is dependent on your business.

The only consideration to take into account is ensuring you have a new technology that is able to change with your business quickly and simply. If your requirements change year on year, month on month, day on day you need a system that can adapt with you and give you quick time to value.

Once implemented in the company these tools will take away manual processes to give you more time to focus on Innovation as mentioned above.

AI

Personally for me the scariest thing not just for business but for society but AI is the next Innovation, similarly to Business Automation, AI and Machine Learning is already the new focus for businesses to reduce headcount and reduce human error.

However tread carefully and do your research with AI. Big name companies have been experimenting with this with some very public failures. What you can do though is look at how AI can help your business and give you more time in your day. That’s why AI is something businesses need to look into this year or you will be on the verge of getting left behind.

Social Media

Social Media can act as the first line of risk recognition within your organization in specific scenarios. Say your business is hosting a sizeable B2B event, and something hazardous is about to break out that attendees can only detect first, an advanced risk automation system can detect specific keywords within social hashtags across social media to pre-empt and alert management staff of potential hazards. Next thing you know, risk management software is mandatory across all large-scale events. Moving forward, managing your social media is crucial to the success of your business in a 2018 - 2022 world. Here are three tools your organisation can utilise this Halloween and beyond:

  1. Hootsuite

Good reason for their success: it’s an all-in-one platform that allows you to curate and schedule content, measure your social ROI, run social media ads, and more.

  1. Agora Pulse:

Unlike the rest, Agora Pulse has several unique features such as competitor analysis and Facebook contest apps at a very affordable price point.

  1. Sendible

Sendible has some useful integrations such as the Canva graphics editor, royalty-free image search, and YouTube search. It also provides some automation for those who want to save time on repetitive tasks.

If your organization is straightforward to consumer whereby risks are often detected by the end-user first, you might want to take boost your social strategy, and explore opportunities to integrate r platforms into your social strategy.

Compliance and Regulatory Changes

Perhaps one of the biggest issues today is Corporate Compliance. Whether it be regulatory, internal or external policies keeping track of it all is becoming more and more difficult. On top of that you have constant changes passing through government and amendments to contracts.

Recently we’ve seen the passing of new Anti-Money Laundering (AML), new data privacy and demand for greater accountability across the board. With no sign of these changes slowing down, it’s no wonder these changes are the scariest thing this Halloween.

Usually you’ll have your Legal and Compliance team looking after this, rummaging through past papers, 1000 cell spreadsheets or multiple systems like your CRM, HR, Contracts and/or Risk systems to collate the data to even find out if there has been a compliance breach. New Technologies and Innovating the process are definitely things you can use to improve the process and make sure your business isn’t at risk. After all, if a computer can collect the data and report on any breaches it eliminates the human error aspect which has gotten so many business in trouble before.

How to Protect Against These Business Risks

Its easier than you think. All you need to do is make the time, money and effort investment to setting things up right. There is no point Innovating your product or services if you don’t know how to sell it. Just as much as there is no point investing in Software or AI if you don’t implement it properly. But once done right these things can drive your business forward.

If you use New Technology to improve efficiencies and take away from the manual tasks you will have more time to focus on Innovating and becoming a business that is proactive rather than reactive. This applies to the Compliance side most of all. If you have your compliance team focused on things you have already breached and pulling data from different systems and spreadsheets you’re reactive. If you use technology to automate this process that job is done. Now you can have them focused on things that matter, like prevention rather than protection.

 

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