Designed to help organizations deal with compliance, competitive risk
Arlington, MA — November 11, 2004 — According to Dr. Robert Charette, a fellow and director of the consulting firm Cutter Consortium's Enterprise Risk Management & Governance practice, enterprise risk management is a critical issue for corporations today.
Especially in the face of increasing demand for greater corporate accountability, as well as world events that have changed the risk landscape and their impact on the business world, Dr. Charette commented. With the increased pressures of compliance concerns, corporations must simultaneously be risk averse while striving to be innovative.
Dr. Charette said that recent corporate scandals and the perceived loss of public trust in corporate management have moved corporate governance to the forefront of legislative, regulatory and Wall Street priorities. Spurred by demands for improved accountability and transparency of executive managements' decision-making practices, new governance laws and directives — such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Combined Code requirements in the UK — have been created.
This has placed organizations in a difficult, paradoxical position, explained Dr. Charette. Corporations must be necessarily risk averse when it comes to corporate compliance issues, while trying to be innovatively risk taking in order to remain competitive. He added that, as a result, Cutter has created the Enterprise Risk Management & Governance practice to help organizations deal with these contradictory and conflicting pressures and improve the quality of both the risk and opportunities they take on.
According to Dr. Charette, the Enterprise Risk Management & Governance (ERM&G) practice area focuses on helping organizations assess their total risk spectrum and manage it as a whole. Through the practice, Cutter's team of ERM&G Senior Consultants help organizations implement sound risk management and governance strategies that allow for innovation and profitability, even under the increasing pressures of compliance.
Our team of practitioners provides the expertise to help organizations create enterprise risk management frameworks and practices, develop business continuity plans, identify and manage operational and enterprise risk, achieve compliance with corporate governance directives, identify IT security risk, and understand the impact of outsourcing on IT auditing, said Cutter Consortium President and CEO Karen Coburn. We offer the strategies that corporate leaders need to create a risk-taking culture that minimizes unnecessary risk while maximizing valuable opportunities for their organizations.
The Cutter Consortium ERM&G practice is led by Dr. Charette, an international authority and industry pioneer in information systems; technology; and enterprise, program and project risk management. He serves as a senior risk advisor to Global 100 CEOs, chief financial officers, program and project managers, as well as to senior government officials worldwide.