Managing Risk May Get Easier with New IBM and Deloitte Project

Risk: it's not just a board game anymore. For businesses, it can represent the difference between profit and loss, even between being a viable business or being closed outright. But managing risk can be a difficult thing, and that's where a new step in IBM (News - Alert) and Deloitte's long-standing team operation comes into play as the firms bring out a powerful new risk intelligence tool.

The new system reportedly combines Deloitte (News - Alert)'s regulatory intelligence with a variety of IBM systems, ranging from IBM Analytics to its various cloud capabilities, and eventually bringing in no less than the Watson system itself. With these systems running in sync, regulations can become classified, down to the paragraph level. This lets companies make comparisons between what regulations call for and what is currently in place, as well as what's likely to be in place in the near-term. Knowing where compliance is less than complete allows companies to bolster compliance and reduce risk to a relative minimum.

But the Deloitte/IBM project goes beyond that as well, exceeding the norm of structured data and moving into unstructured as well as external data. These new data sources can allow for predictive capabilities to step in, which in turn offer up insight that can be acted on, helping companies limit exposure to risk and give less impact to the issues that do arise.

IBM's general manager of analytics solutions, Alistair Rennie, commented on the project's latest developments, saying “Financial services firms are under tremendous pressure, which has forced them to spend the majority of their IT budgets addressing regulatory requirements. There is an opportunity to transform the approach organizations are taking and leverage the same investments to go beyond compliance and deliver real business value. We are excited to be working with Deloitte, the leading global risk consultancy provider, with a reputation of helping its clients proactively manage enterprise risk. Combining their knowledge with our technology will provide our clients with breakthrough capabilities and deliver risk and regulatory intelligence in ways previously not possible.”

Risk is always a problem. While risk can lead to reward, it can also lead to disaster. Having a way to manage risk, to keep its downsides to a minimum and to be prepared for the impact it can have, can make a lot of difference for the company that embraces such a philosophy. Risk can never really be eliminated, but it can be prepared for, minimized, even taken advantage of thanks to proper risk management strategies. Developments like those of Deloitte and IBM show what kind of protective measures can be taken against risk, especially when the full power of advanced technology is brought to bear.

It's going to be interesting to see what the early adopters think of the IBM/Deloitte project, but chances are, we'll soon hear some exciting case studies about companies that put risk in its place, and even managed to bring it into a more favorable light.