Active Risk Manager >

 Product Overview

Active Risk Manager is the world's most widely deployed and only truly comprehensive ERM software system. It is being used by over 25,000 users worldwide in more than 60 companies on 5 continents.

Originally developed to address the risk management requirements of large defence programs it now manages the risks of many of the globe's largest organizations across all sectors. To read more about the history of ARM, please click here or on the link in the navigation on the left.

ARM is a COTS+ product. This means that there is one off-the-shelf application that is available to the entire customer base, but that if a customer requires specific enhancements to the application we are happy to develop these as either non-funded, partially-funded or fully customer-funded components of work.

All new features will be added to the core product line, rather than developing product variants. However, some features may be selectively enabled or disabled for specific customers ensuring that the product provides a comprehensive solution to your needs.

Active Risk Manager (ARM) is guided by its product strategy, Closed-Loop Risk Management. Essentially, the strategy seeks to ensure that risk information is gathered from throughout the entire organization and from all positional levels, so that it can be analyzed and managed appropriately. We want to get the right information, to the right people, at the right time (in a secure fashion).

Simply put, ARM helps companies to make the right decisions, more often.

The philosophy that enables ARM to help you achieve this goal can be summarised as follows:

• Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) requires all "currencies" of risk to be supported
• It is necessary to break down individual risk silos
• Risk should be communicated across the enterprise
• Escalation must occur not just up and down the vertical structures, but also across divisions, e.g. IT Risk may impact Sales division but who owns it and how is it communicated?
• The whole enterprise must contribute to the risk management process
• Each organization will have its own risk "appetite" that defines the way in which risk is most effectively managed
• Risk must be communicated in a manner appropriate to the audience
• Risk can be an opportunity as well as a threat

How does ARM deliver the goals of the above philosophy?

ARM aims to remove barriers of integration and interoperability, by:

• Integrating with established, best-of-breed products from recognized suppliers
• Structuring our software into components which can be easily replaced or upgraded
• Using a web-based architecture which allows easy access from client machines over a wide area, and on a variety of platforms.

This means that we are able to take advantage of industry standard products such as Microsoft SQL Server for the infrastructure, Microsoft Project, Primavera, Artemis, Telelogic DOORS, Cradle and others for the Project Planning and Requirements Management packages.

The core business functions provided by ARM can be summarized as follows:

• Capture of Requirements and Business Activity Breakdown structures, either directly within ARM or by integration with partner products
• Risk Identification: capture of all possible risks into the ARM Risk Register
• Risk Assessment: assessment of the severity of each risk using either a qualitative or quantitative approach
• Risk Mitigation: putting in place mitigating plans and responses to avoid risks or reduce their impacts
• Risk Analysis: calculation of forecast project cost after taking risk into consideration.