Industries – Retail Services

THE CHALLENGE

Retail organisations face an increasingly complex and challenging business environment with more and more pressure to remain competitive whilst ensuring long-term sustainability. Faced with consumer dynamics, pricing pressures, brand and marketing effectiveness, supply chain agility and resilience, innovation disrupters, retail organisations are re-organising and re-prioritising their organisation’s approach to Risk Management.

Typical risks facing retail organisations include:

  • Pricing pressures: consumers demand good value, low price, discounts, loyalty programs
  • Intense competition with low margins: merger and acquisition activity.
  • Adverse consumer dynamics, demographic shifts: tailored products to meet the needs of different segments.
  • Innovation: need to manage resources effectively across geographies to achieve regional and global scale and ensure speed to market.
  • Branding and marketing effectiveness: influencing consumers in stores as well as identifying and engaging consumers via social media.
  • Inventory management including stock loss management.
  • Supply chain management and innovation: just in time, cost of goods, inventory holding costs, cost to serve.
  • Commodity price spikes.
  • Technology disrupters: e.g. online stores.
  • Increased regulatory pressure including social responsibility, social movements, environmental etc.
  • Shortage of skilled and experienced labour.
  • Strategic risk.
  • Operational inefficiencies.
  • Infrastructure quality.
  • Reputational risk.

THE SOLUTION

A flexible and integrated risk management framework is critical for meeting the needs of a complex and dynamic industry such as the retail industry. Retailers need an effective way of prioritising and managing risk across the organisation as well as complying with local and cross-border legislation, standards and mandates. Proactive risk management also involves the documenting and managing of key risk indicators, incidents and near misses. In addition, the identification and ongoing monitoring of risk mitigation plans is critical to effective risk management.

An organisation’s risk and opportunities, strategy, business model, performance and sustainable development are all inseparable elements of the value creation process. (King IV™ Principle 4)

HOW BARNOWL FACILITATES THE SOLUTION

BarnOwl GRC software streamlines your GRC processes, integrates risk, compliance and assurance information on a centralised platform, standardises risk and control taxonomies and offers the flexibility and scalability required for your changing business environment. BarnOwl:

  • provides a customisable risk-based framework for the retail industry (in line with the COSO and ISO31000 standards) for you to manage your operational risk and compliance process as well as facilitate audits, findings and detailed analysis.
  • enables you to identify and document risks, causes, consequences and related controls.
  • automates risk and control self-assessments.
  • provides for the recording and monitoring of loss events, tip offs (whistleblowing), etc.
  • provides a centralised repository for all your regulatory compliance requirements (fully integrated 3rd party compliance library) and tracks how you are meeting each compliance requirement.
  • assists with the automation and monitoring of key risk indicators and compliance activities.
  • streamlines internal audits, forensic audits as well as third-party audits / investigations and enables you to gain real-time visibility into risk-based auditing, audit findings, root cause analysis and the ongoing monitoring of mitigation actions.
  • brings together risk management, compliance, assurance, as well as all related communication, analysis and reporting under a common platform.
  • provides continuous monitoring of your risk universe with early-warning notifications.
  • drives the proactive management of risk mitigation strategies.
  • generates risk intelligence and trend reporting at all levels of the organisation.

THE BENEFITS OF USING BARNOWL

The benefits of using BarnOwl include:

  • Improved GRC maturity through an integrated and flexible GRC solution.
  • Optimise and monitor risk-reward outcomes by gaining a comprehensive, real time view of your organisation’s risk profile.
  • Simplify regulatory compliance, using a single system to manage your compliance requirements and activities.
  • Enhance GRC productivity and efficiency as well as embed standards across the value chain.
  • Facilitate greater communication and collaboration on GRC tasks across all business units and locations.
  • Drive ownership and accountability for risk management across the organisation.
  • Facilitate the principle that an organisation’s risk and opportunities, strategy, business model, performance and sustainable development are all inseparable elements of the value creation process. (King IV™ Principle 4)