Managing risk is essential in every organization to accomplish its key objectives effectively. Risk management not only requires a reliable process to capture risks, but also needs a mechanism to document and administer the organization’s response.An appropriate risk management tool always helps the risk managers to identify, assess, and prioritize the risks which can be prevented. Here, we will discuss about spreadsheets – commonly used risk management tools and their true costs. We will also know about the best tool to replace spreadsheets for effective risk management.Spreadsheets are commonly used management tools because they are
• Convenient to use: Many people believe that spreadsheets are convenient to collect, code, sort and analyze data. Yes, they are better than paper based management systems, but they are risky.• Flexible to enter data: With some basic encoding, spreadsheets offer flexible arrangements of rows and columns to enter data. They allow the user to configure and enter information in a way that suits his unique needs. But risk management involves analysis of various factors and a spreadsheet may not be helpful.• Low cost or free option: Spreadsheets are either available as freeware or at low-cost. That is why organizations use them extensively. But they fail to understand the fact that the true cost of a tool should be defined by the operational costs that affect the business on long-run; not by the initial cost of the tool.Are they really beneficial?
Many business owners and risk managers today are using spreadsheets as risk management tools unaware of the risks involved (however some are aware). Here are the risks involved:• Inability to process huge amounts of data: Although spreadsheets are a good solution for small volumes of data, the processing and calculation will become complicated with the continual growth.• Time consuming: Risk management requires collecting great deal of information, which often results in huge number of spreadsheets interlinked to each other. A little change to the data structure becomes a great task. This makes risk managers spend countless hours validating data, double checking formulas, and updating values, which is as a time-consuming process.• Complex to find mistakes: It is quite difficult to find mistakes in a spreadsheet with lot of data. It is often time consuming process to find where exactly the mistakes have occurred.• Limits the depth of risk analysis: With each change made to a spreadsheet, links between the information are lost making it difficult to analyze relationships over time. Without these links, it becomes tough to link risks and their controls. Also they offer limited access to past and current data making it difficult to compare data overtime.• Intensive labor: The process of risk management involves continuous updating of data and it increases day by day. Updating data and using spreadsheets effectively requires lot of time and effort. So intensive labor with good knowledge of using the shortcuts and formulas is compulsory.• Lacks security: A user can accidentally or intentionally delete vast amounts of critical information. Spreadsheets are highly vulnerable to virus attacks, hard disk crashes, and other unexpected disasters.Underlying costs of using spreadsheets
In general, people think that spreadsheets are free, but they never calculate the underlying costs that can impact the business. Following are the true costs of using them.• Labor costs: As discussed earlier, it takes lot of effort to create, maintain, organize, and report using spreadsheets. However, the fact that these things require labor, which in turn results in huge costs to the company, is often ignored.• Opportunity costs: Spreadsheets consume lot of your time and effort, which you can productively use for adding value to the organization. Many business owners, in fact, lose many opportunities hanging around with spreadsheets.• Risk and non-compliance costs: Spreadsheets lack in company wide visibility, accountability, security and control which results in increased costs in terms of failed audits, unforeseen events, increased insurance costs and so on.• Scalability costs: A small company can manage and use one spreadsheet to track all records. But as the business grows, the effort of maintaining and consolidating these records increases exponentially. At one point this process fails and negatively impacts the business.• Human error costs: Spreadsheets are vulnerable to manipulation, which can dramatically impact the company. Moreover, with the increasing chances of human errors, it is difficult to consider that the data is valid and reliable. These human errors can cost a lot to the company.Effective tool to replace spreadsheet – Risk Management Software
After seeing all the risks and costs involved with spreadsheets, one would certainly ask for a better tool to manage risks and here is the solution – the Risk Management Software. It can effectively replace spreadsheets in the risk management process. Following are the benefits of using risk management software.• Effective control over GRC processes: Risk management software helps in the effective control over the GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) processes with proper documentation and work flow. They also help managers in risk assessment and analysis, visualization and reporting.• Data security: User can limit the availability of data by creating passwords. He can also give full access to all the data to a particular group of people within the organization. This feature eliminates the risk of manipulation of data.• Real time recording: Recording and updating information regarding risks is easy using this software. You need not spend hours to update the data.• Reliable audits: This software offers full protection to all the data in the system with fully automated backups. This allows auditors to extract robust and reliable audit trails without unnecessary effort and thus it helps them in identification of risks, and creation of risk management strategies.• Automated risk reporting: It provides the user with clear information on their objectives and risks associated. It also informs about the required actions and scheduled dates to implement them to prevent risks.• Clear and consistent reports: A unique feature of this software is that it provides clear and consistent reports making it easy for managers to view the risks in real-time.How to choose effective risk management software
With growing demand of the risk management software, many companies offering this software evolved in the market. Therefore it is important to choose the effective one to reap the maximum benefits. Following are some tips to choose a good one.• Reputed vendor: A well established and experienced vendor definitely offers standard products as he fully understands risk management standards.• Maximum features: Before buying the product, make sure that it has all features to help you in managing the risks properly.• Customer service and tech support: As this product is new for the organization, it is important to choose a company that offers 24/7 tech support and timely customer service. Moreover, as risk environment demands a constant change of compliance, make sure that the vendor is offering regular product updates and maintenance releases.An upgrade in the existing technology never says that the existing product is of no use, instead offers the user with more useful features. Upgrading to latest tools like risk management software enhances the organization’s capabilities in managing risk.

Digital Marketing / Internet Marketing / Online Marketing are one of the most used terms of the industry today. However, it is sadly just a bunch of jargon for most of the people who hear it and use it to convey their mind. What exactly is digital marketing and what part of it is essential for today’s business person? We’re here to break it down for you in the simplest words possible.Online Marketing is simply marketing of your product or service onto digital platforms so as to hold onto your loyal consumers as well as increase your reach to new potential target audience swiftly.That is it. That is what Online marketing is. There are some further questions that need attention to solve your confusion; such as:Is digital marketing the same as social media marketing?The answer is yes. Digital / Internet marketing is a wider concept as compared to social media marketing in the sense that, all social media platforms are available digitally i.e. via the internet. However, there are other platforms that come under digital marketing other than social media marketing.What are the concepts and platforms of digital marketing?The search engines that we use to search our queries and requirements are in themselves a humongous platform for online marketing. This concept is called “Search Engine Marketing” or SEM.Search Engine Marketing is marketing of your product on search engines such as Google and Bing by Yahoo. This platform is of utmost importance for businesses that are into a B2B industry.Another concept that comes under the wing of digital marketing is “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a way of developing your website’s content in a way that allows the search engine’s algorithm to crawl and test your website efficiently. It is a way to get higher rankings in the search results on the search engine; helping us to have a better hand at SEM.SEO is a primary necessity of any and every website owner as it helps you stand out among the sea of websites we see today.Social Media Marketing is a concept that comprises of campaigns designed to market your product or service on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. SMM is a great tool when it comes to products that have a B2C segment.There is an interesting concept called Re-marketing in Internet marketing which enables us to reach out to the potential consumer base multiple times. It can be seen as following your consumer on various platforms, websites and showing your personalized ad copy to them so as to keep reminding them about their visit to your website.This also enables us to work on another factor called Consumer Lifetime Value wherein we can increase our reach to existing customers and improve our ROI from these consumers through various practices such as Email Marketing, Re-marketing, Paid Ad campaigns, RSS Feeds etc.However, for a great digital / Internet marketing experience, a campaign needs to be developed using all the above mentioned platforms.How is digital marketing different from traditional marketing?Digital Marketing is cost effective in terms of better reach and results.Internet Marketing lets you target specific audience based upon demographics, interest and devices.Internet Marketing gives us factual data that can be statistically analysed. For instance, if a hoarding is marketing your product, you have no clue how many people saw the hoarding, read the content and actually became customers because of that hoarding. However, in Digital marketing, say we run a campaign marketing the same product, we can analyse the data produced by different marketing platforms that can show us how many people saw the product, how many actually became consumers and which consumers came via which of the used platforms. This allows us to find glitches in our campaign and work on it to make it even more action driven.But then should traditional marketing be stopped completely?Of course not! Traditional marketing, in fact, paired with digital marketing can give results superior than just traditional or digital marketing.However, one thing that people mistake about digital marketing is that it can be done for free. It is true to an extent; however, to get the best results, digital marketing needs to have an independent budget. Money must be set aside to be able to exploit all the opportunities that digital marketing has to offer to your business and its glorious future.

If you get your products in front of a targeted market, you stand a good chance you are going to make an affiliate sale, which in turn means that you are going to your commission.Therefore if you are an affiliate marketer, you will agree that you are consistently trying to get your products in front of Highly Targeted Audience.However, you should always be conscious of staying away from spamming or even having your market regard you as spam if you intend to build a reputable business.In this article, I am going to teach a technique which is not a new technique. Still, it is an effective marketing technique especially if you are looking to market at low cost, affiliate and landing page friendly, scalable, no spam and effective marketing technique that is opened and read by your target market.You will use this technique in your marketing activities to get in front of a more Highly Targeted Audience. Irrespective of how you get in front of your audience currently.This low-cost marketing technique is Ezine Marketing. You may not have heard of Ezine Marketing before, or perhaps you are like me and have heard of it but didn’t take much note of it.However, either way, if you are not using Ezine Marketing part of your marketing activities, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.Now I would like to mention that Ezine Marketing is not spamming.I specifically mention this right now as I have recently been a victim of spam and I caught off guard was annoyed. ( and I am an affiliate marketer).This marketer was blatantly spamming my blog by leaving a comment only to promote.Even though annoyed, my thoughts went to those who are not affiliate marketers and how annoying they get.So spamming, unfortunately, is still happening despite all the great efforts to rid the world of it although there has been a significant reduction of spam to previous years.The point is that you don’t want to come across in your marketing efforts as a spammer.However, you can be more productive and effective by focussing your attention on a better and more targeted audience through ezine marketing.What Is EzinesFor those who may not have heard of it or those who are not that familiar with it?Ezine is an electronic magazine. The “E” from the word “electronic” and the “zine” from the word “magazine” is combined to make “ezine”.Similarly to subscribing to a magazine and have it delivered to your address, you would also subscribe to an ezine (which is an electronic magazine) and have it delivered to your address – this time it is to your email address.Never Going To Be Spam So please note – these ezines delivered to an audience who have subscribed to them. The result being ezine marketing is never spam.Ezines Opened And ReadEzine marketing is so effective as ezines get opened and read because the audience has all subscribed to receive them.The Ezine community is used to receiving ezines and therefore, are expecting some level of controlled marketing.Without Spamming So I hope you are noticing that Ezine marketing is a great way to get your product in front of a highly targeted audience without spamming.Build Your ListEzine marketing is a great way to build your list. It would be best if you were growing your list every day and ezines can help you build a highly targeted list as you can focus on a specific demographic age group culture etc.Affiliate Friendly And Landing Page Friendly You don’t have to be dictated by the social media platforms anymore as they force you to direct your audience, as you can send them straight to an affiliate link or to a landing page. So, therefore, Ezines are also affiliate friendly and landing page friendly.Short Mini-Course If you want to know more about getting involved with ezine marketing I have a quick mini-course to offer you that will give you all the information you need to make an informed decision to go ahead with ezine marketing or not.The course is short video training with easy to understand chunks of information so that you can put what you learn into action.It is delivered by the worlds first, and best DOE is the worlds first and best ezine resource for ezines advertising.So is this for you?So With Ezine Marketing, You Can Target Your Exact Market Avatar With Your Products1. Affordable2. Highly targeted3. Email marketing brings a high ROI4. Many ad types to choose from5. Affiliate friendly6. Capture page friendly7. Scalable