Customer Successes/Testimonials

Winchester City Council
"We have now moved all our risk management onto Covalent from the old Excel based system. The great benefit is that Risks can be properly tied together with Actions and Key Risk Indicators so a risk has an action plan attached and KRIs have actions and risks linked. Previously, it was hard work trying to get people to recognise that they had to take proper account of risk. Also, Covalent makes all our risk schedules very accessible for updating and reporting and we have standard report layouts for people to use. Each risk has an identified owner who is responsible for updating that risk and pursuing the associated action plan. Final word - far better than what we had before and works easily and clearly for risk owners."

Lichfield District Council
"We use Covalent to record and manage all our service and corporate risk registers. We find the system very simple to use and are very happy with it. The key benefit that we find from using Covalent rather than a standalone system is the ease with which risks can be linked to the KRIs and Actions that they refer to. For instance our Corporate Risk Register is arrived at by assessing the risks to each of the Actions in our Strategic Action Plan, which is also held on Covalent. Reports showing the actions and the risks that could affect them (or vice versa) are easy to produce. We have devolved the maintenance of the risk registers to 'risk champions' in each department, and they have found the system easy to use with very little training."

Pennaf Housing
"We wanted to mainstream our risk management, to determine and to mitigate risks, and to link them with our relevant action plans and Key Risk Indicators. When we uploaded our risk plans onto Covalent, we found that there were a number of weaknesses to our current approach. Covalent systematically highlighted a number of areas that didn't 'fit' and we were able to make positive improvements to our risk management approach as a result."

Dumfries and Galloway Council
"We have been using Covalent Risk Management over the past 12 months. We find it very helpful in managing and reporting the Council's Corporate/Department risk management information. The ability to link Actions and KRIs to Risks to demonstrate what the Council is doing to manage the Risk is most useful. It does take time to insert the information initially, but once entered and kept up to date and with the built in report layouts, the quickness of running reports outstrips the time it took in the past using excel and word. The facility of storing Assessment History is also good."

A Local Authority customer in Northern England has set-up over 2000 risks in Covalent, grouped in 29 risk registers ranging from 'Internal Audit' to 'Health and Safety Partnership' and 'Planning Services Unit'. The council has also identified a host of 'Business Continuity' risks, and grouped them into four sub-registers.

The Council's strategic risks register provides a good example of how extensively Covalent ERM can be used to manage risks across the organisation. It is organised into 12 risk registers covering everything from 'Government Funding' and 'Gershon Review' through to 'Housing Stock options' and 'Recruitment/ Retention of key staff'.

Each register contains a number of risks that have been colour coded based on the risk score attached to them with ownership of the risks allocated at two levels; Managed by and Assigned to.

"The software is particularly useful for recording and reporting on our strategic risk register. Our members really like the risk reports we produce through Covalent, and we are able to show complex risks in a simple visual format, with risk matrices, direction of travel, current traffic-light status, ownership and review information, and notes."

"The speed of reporting to the stakeholders has improved vastly. What was a lengthy and time consuming job pulling all the various reports together is now a far slicker process with reports that interrogate the system and then produce virtually the complete report. Any last minute changes in ratings etc. are easily accommodated."

Leeds College of Building
"We use Covalent to monitor both operational and strategic risks. We have high priority risks that are monitored by the SMT regularly. All our risks are linked to Key Risk Indicators - i.e. not achieving a KRI is a risk in terms of funding etc."

Knowsley Housing Trust
"We have grouped over 250 individual risks into a series of 'theme-based' registers. Each risk is scored based on its Likelihood of occurrence and its Impact, resulting in a traffic-lighted status that quickly highlights potential problem areas.
Each risk is assigned to a specific owner with triggers set to send e-mail reminders to assignees when a risk is due for reassessment.
Full profile information is held, detailing the risk factors, potential impacts and the range of internal controls that are in place.
Actions designed to mitigate risks are set up in Covalent and linked to individual risks."