Strategic Thought

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 Product History

Strategic Thought first looked at the production of a risk management system in 1998.  At that time all risk management solutions were designed for use by individuals or within small teams, regardless of whether its use was for project risk management in the defence world, or operational risk management in the financial world. Development of Active Risk Manager (ARM) began in 1999 and the solution was launched in November 2000, with AMEC signing up as the first customer.

Lockheed Martin provided ARM its first large project risk management implementation when ARM was selected as the software solution to manage all risks on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) project, the largest and most expensive project in the world at the time. Lockheed needed a project risk management solution that would facilitate the proactive management of risks across the entire JSF project, including those risks of over forty sub-contractors and customers.

ARM reduced the time spent on project risk management by 75% (equal to approximately 425 man hours per month on data manipulation alone) and significantly reduced budget and schedule impacts (see case study).

Twenty-plus years of experience in the integration business has provided Strategic Thought with the knowledge and skills required to consistently deliver vision-fulfilling solutions to our customers. This experience and knowledge of integration issues drove us to envision risk management from a far more holistic point of view. We saw that in order to get the most out of risk management, an organization needs to consider information from across the business, ensuring that decisions are made based on all the available and current data.

After ARM’s success in meeting the risk management needs of project and program managers, we continued to focus on providing a solution that addressed the risk requirements of the entire organization (as well as the effect that different units within an enterprise have on each other).

Thus, Active Risk Manager began offering functionality for operational risk management and corporate governance, summarizing the risks across the business into a single set of views that can be presented to the executive layer, whilst also taking into account the board’s governance responsibilities and supporting these with compliance and risk management.

ARM is now one of the leading solutions for operational risk management. Nestle uses ARM to manage the many operational risks that it is exposed to such as supply chain, reputation, and cash-flow. Reduced provision expenditure and more accurate forecasting has led to lower costs of risk mitigation as well as eliminated risk duplication (see case study).

Network Rail uses ARM to meet their Corporate Governance and Compliance Management needs. Their goal? Deliver one corporate system and one risk management process that eradicates all risk silos within Network Rail. Deployment of a corporate risk process through ARM has enabled Network Rail to take a holistic view of risk across all projects, and is now achieving clear and auditable compliance with governance and regulatory requirements (see case study).

Strategic Thought has consistently improved and refined Active Risk Manager through regular release cycles. Since 2004, ARM's development has specifically targeted Enterprise Risk Management (managing the different risk and opportunity elements that affect all functions across an enterprise). You can learn more about how Active Risk Manager supports the many different disciplines affected by risk in an organization in the Risk Management Disciplines section.

We expanded our risk management portfolio in 2005 with the acquisition of RisGen, a complimentary ERM application with a strong customer base in the government and health sectors. In order to ensure Active Risk Manager’s continued leadership of the marketplace, the functionality of RisGen will be incorporated into ARM over the next 18 months.

From the beginning ARM was designed to be integrated with 3rd party project and requirements planning applications such as MS Project, Telelogic Doors, and Primavera. Now, through the ARM Portal, we are able to integrate ARM with almost any enterprise application, facilitating the delivery of all relevant information to the right people, so that such data can be used in the decision making process and developments can therefore be reported on to management at the right time and in a secure fashion.

Today, Active Risk Manager has been rolled out to more than 75 customers, and now supports over 25,000 users. It has been hailed by leading analysts and risk professionals as the most comprehensive risk management software solution available on the market, used to address project risk management needs, operational risk requirements, as well as enterprise risk management.

With both Microsoft Gold Partner status and IBM Premier Partner status, the Strategic Thought Services team continues to deliver complex solutions of the highest quality level. What sets us apart is our ability to offer the complete package of services required to implement an effective and efficient enterprise-wide risk management system. Contact us so we can discuss your company's needs and requirements today.