Does Your Company Need A Risk Consultant?

Running a medium to large-scale enterprise in an emerging market has its own perilous risks. Everything from compliance to the quality of the workforce can be dubious. There’s always the worrisome possibility of assets, finances, and even property being lost to the pitfalls of the local business environment. Given their prevalence, it’s easier to accept these downsides than be discouraged.

Any plan to establish long-term operations in a particular niche, especially for strategic industries such as manufacturing or outsourcing, should acknowledge the role of a risk consultant. If a lawyer is at hand to smoothen legal wrinkles, the person in charge of risk handles the really dangerous stuff.

Multinationals that wish to maintain a secure foothold in a market as large as the Philippines have three security challenges their leadership must prepare for. These are fraud, espionage, and IP theft. Failing to mitigate any of these can harm the bottom line and inflict permanent damage on careers and reputations. One boutique security firm specializing in dealing with fraud, corporate espionage, and IP theft is Adsum Risk Consulting (ARC).

When it comes to fraud, the extent and scale of it in the private sector can be daunting, but there are proven strategies for defeating it. Fraud and its related activities (corruption and theft) are often perpetrated within organizations and can go on undetected for a long time. When it comes to fraud investigations, a security consultant with either a legal or law enforcement background–maybe both–is useful for their outsider’s perspective and methodology. But on one condition: their work mustn’t get tangled in organizational turf wars.

While corporate espionage evokes dramatic visions of sleuthing suspects digging through discarded documents in a garbage bag, the reality of it is more nuanced. Businesses that handle “sensitive” patents or brands that impacts financial markets are in acute risk of having their employees targeted or the organization’s leadership compromised. A risk consultant’s input in this scenario can take on multiple guises. One is to simply guide members of an organization through the fatal terrain of corporate espionage. Is someone receiving suspicious emails? Here’s how to deal with them. The tactics might be simple, but what matters is they work.

The awful truth behind intellectual property (IP) theft is it happens on a vast scale across Asia. The easiest way to defeat might be a strong legal team yet there are instances when a risk consultant can be more effective. IP theft assumes many forms and the most troubling are elaborate counterfeit operations where multiple suspects are involved. Eliminating these operations requires elements of shoe-leather investigative work and instilling best practices in an organization. IP theft can be stopped dead as long as there’s a plan.

For companies that need a robust capability against the threats posed by fraud, corporate espionage, and IP theft, ARC’s track record and unparalleled expertise makes them a natural first choice in business risk services. Get in touch now.