Reducing risk: Top strategies for businesses

Navigating the business landscape is important for continually delivering the high-quality service your clients expect. Efficiency and resilience are key, especially in the face of change, in which your business’s ability to adapt is vital for its success.

However, it can be difficult to know which changes to embark on to ensure your longevity, but with a high risk of change comes a high reward. Here, we will discuss the top strategies your business can implement to reduce risks while adopting change.

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Prepared for change

As customer demands increase over time, so does the technology that comes with it. The needs of employers and workloads adjust, and as such, businesses and working behaviors change to meet market standards. Being in line with this change is important for keeping a competitive edge. To meet these new demands, you need to accept change. Embracing new technology can ensure you aren’t falling behind your competitors, as well as setting your business up to be well prepared for any further changes which might occur. Whether you are providing new services to meet customer demands, implementing new IT systems to manage larger data sets, or versing your employees in new training to improve company standards, change can lead to stronger business sustainability.

This doesn’t mean compromising your established company parameters to accommodate outside of your expertise, but rather embracing positive changes which align with your company’s values. Not each new trend or technology will fit your business, so it is important to know what is best, not simply what is new.

Avoid dissatisfaction from human error

Mistakes happen, whether inputting or using the wrong data, and can have a costly effect on your business and lead to dissatisfaction for your clients and employees. Spending extra time to correct human error slows down your business production. However, by investing in digital technology, you can reduce this risk. Streamlining your operations and using automated systems can improve your processes and decrease the likelihood of mistakes.

By implementing cloud computing software solutions, your data sharing can maintain flexibility and efficiency. Data-driven technology assists in the management of data across all employees, making human error less likely to occur as everyone has access to the same data. And with the risk of human error even including data breaches, it is important to reduce this as much as possible. Not to mention, as the data will only need to be input into one system, rather than multiple, your team will have more time to complete other tasks, increasing the production and efficiency of your company.

Analyze

Making decisions always include a risk factor -- will it pay off? Is this trend beneficial for the company? To reduce this risk, you can analyze trends and identify upcoming market changes early through data analysis. This can aid your decision-making, giving you an informed idea of the likely outcomes. Using AI and data analysis models tailored to your business can provide potential benefits and drawbacks of taking action.

Simply looking into the history of your company and analyzing past decision-making can be an example of this. If your business has a wealth of historic data, this can inform your decisions going forward. Perhaps a past decision appeared to be beneficial on the surface but actually drained your resources -- are you in a better position now to accommodate this or will there be a similar outcome? Historic data not only highlights numerical outcomes, such as increased production leading to a greater cashflow, but it can also comment on the likely human factors of choosing a change -- did employees struggle with this work last time?

Increase communication

Siloed working could be negatively impacting your work. It increases errors as individuals work separately. Miscommunications, duplications, and wasted time can all lead to dissatisfaction in the workplace and with your clients. Deadlines can slip, or you could be providing poor customer service. Siloed working separates the business into unmanageable sections and increases the risk. But by increasing communication and streamlining your processes, you can establish a coherent and universal method of work across the company.

To cut down siloed working, you should use the same data sets within the same data management system. This will reduce the time spent on data input, as well as reduce the likelihood of data errors causing a problem. Each department will be working from the same set and have access to the same information, streamlining processes and inviting open conversation across teams. This will also minimize inaccurate and out-of-date information, and it can be updated easily.

Prepare for any scenario

The best means of reducing business risk is to understand what’s coming. By analyzing trends and changes your company might take in the future, you can understand both the benefits and drawbacks you might face. In-depth analysis is crucial. Consider taking into consideration market trends, changing legislations and company adjustments such as expansion.

By using AI and scenario modelling systems, customized to your business, you can carefully predict the future in order to make more informed decisions. Understanding the variables which could change your outcomes, and the ways to manage these, you can best put in place action plans to increase the progression of your business. All business comes with risks, but not all of these are bad. Adopting strategies such as implementing data management systems, increasing communication both inside and out of the office, as well as supporting decision-making with data analysis and prediction models can all benefit the future of your company.

Photo Credit: Olivier Le Moal / Shutterstock

Barry O’Donnell is Chief Technology Officer at TSG.