ERM Glossary

  • Business Model-The core aspect of an organization, including its vision, mission, strategies, infrastructure, policies, offering and processes.
  • Risk Categories– Either strategic, financial, operational, or hazard.
  • Chief Risk Officer-Senior risk professional engaged in ERM in an organization.
  • Risk Optimization– The balance between risk seeking and risk avoidance.
  • Risk Attitude– The manner in which an organization and its stakeholders collectively perceive, assess and treat risk.
  • Risk Appetite– The event on perils and levels of impact an organization intends to retain, treat, and monitor.
  • Risk Tolerance– The level of residual risk that an organization and its stakeholders are willing to bear within a given strategy.
  • Executive Goals– The executives’ strategic goals set the direction for the operational and tactical objectives developed by the remainder of the organization.
  • Strategic Management-The coordination of interrelated activities of functional areas of a business to achieve an established purpose.
  • Vision Statement-The aspirational description of what an organization will accomplish in the long-term future.
  • Mission Statement– A broad expression of an entity’s goals
  • Risk Criteria-Reference standards, measure, or expectations used in judging the significance of a given risk in context with strategic goals.
  • Risk Maturity Model-Tool to help measure results and monitor progress.
  • Stakeholder– AN individual or organization that is directly or indirectly involved with or affected by an organization’s decisions and activities.
  • Values– Those outcomes that satisfy stakeholders, including economic performance, social justice,and environmental stewardship.
  • Risk Perception-Gives their values and goals, the manner in which individuals and organizations observe and perceive volatile situations.
  • Risk Position-A party’s risk appetite plus risk tolerance, the willingness to pay to accept volatile projects and pay to transfer volatile situations to theirs parties.
  • Materiality– The measure of a significant variance from an expected outcome.
  • SWOT Analysis– Used to determine strengths and weaknesses within the organization and an external evaluation  of possible opportunities and threats.
  • Economic Intelligence– The information used to evaluate changes in macroeconomic information for production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services with country data on labor, finance, and taxation that affect risk management decisions.
  • Business Intelligence-The enterprise information management technologies designed to plan and control the decision-making information flows that affect upside and downside risk analysis and extract, transform, and load systems data into an integrated structure.
  • Risk Intelligence-Is both a process and a product. It consists of the organizational ability to collect and collate data, statistics and information concerning risk/volatility. This is followed by the systematic analysis, interpretation, and presentation for this information, culminating in decision making that produces the most favorable outcome under existing circumstances.
  • Key Performance Indicator (KPI)– A financial or non financial measurement that defines how successfully an organization is progressing toward its long-term goals.
  • Key Risk Indicator (KRI)– A financial or non financial metric used to help define and measure potential losses.
  • Corporate Governance– The mechanism and procedures that determine how corporations are run.
  • Performance Management Scorecards– Summarizes performance status information from multiple source systems. They enable management to monitor both changes in financial results and progress toward key operational targets that are linked to strategic plans and goals.
  • Benchmarking– The process of comparing results to industry standards or best practices.
  • Risk Factors– the quantitative and qualitative criteria used in the evaluation of the relative loss exposure levels in financial accounts, work flow processes and risk events.
  • Leading Indicator– A predictor of change at the beginning of an economic cycle.
  • Lagging Indicator– A consequence of change at the end of an economic cycle.
  • Business Intelligence Information User Roles-The functional and organizational parameters used to evaluate how information requirements relate to job responsibilities
  • Decision Role Analysis– A process that determines what kinds of decisions are needed, where in the organizational structure those decisions should be made and to what extent each manager should be involved.
  • Business Intelligence Reports-The multidimensional slices of information that connect system users to performance scorecards and analytics for enterprise-wide decision making
  • Dimensional Design-A business intelligence method used to convert transaction data into hierarchical structures for enterprise-wide decision analysis
  • Metadata-The data about data that provide context for analyzing transaction facts with efficient structure for grouping hierarchical information.
  • Performance Benchmarking– A process for comparing results to comparable organizations and best practices.
  • Data Mining– The process of extracting hidden patterns form data that is used in a wide range of applications for research and fraud detection.
  • Notification Log– A control document used to monitor risk threshold alert message sent to system users.
  • Master Data Management-A set of processes and tools that consistently defines and manages the nontransactional data entities of an organization: also called organization reference data.
  • Risk Information Mapping-Connects or maps enterprise risk information source applications to business reporting cycles and process responsibilities for managing risk controls activities at specific points in the organization.
  • Tone At the Top-The environment an organization’s senior executives create by clearly communicating expectations to employees and other stakeholders, leading by example, linking governance with transparency and encouraging ethical behavior.
  • Resource– Any element that can change in value or level.
  • Event-An occurrence or series of occurrence that causes a change in a resource’s value or level.
  • Impact-A positive or negative consequence or change in value or level of a resource.
  • Loss Exposure– Any condition or situation that presents a possibility of loss, whether or not an actual loss occurs.
  • Risk Register– A tool developed at the risk owner level that links specific activities, processes, projects, or plans to a list of identified risks and results of risk analysis and evaluation and that is ultimately consolidated at the enterprise level.
  • Risk Center– A discrete unit within an organization, having a leader and specific objectives, and disposing of specific resources, at which level a particular risk ( or group of risks) is most appropriately and effectively managed.
  • Risk Owner– An individual accountable for the identification, assessment, treatment, and monitoring of risks in a specific environment.
  • Critical Path– The sequence of activities in a project that take the longest time to complete and determine the overall time length of the project.
  • Scope Creep– A project management phenomenon that occurs when unplanned activities are added to existing activities are increased, resulting in a project that exceeds its original budget or time schedule.
  • Scope Statement- A clarifying project document that details the objective to be accomplished , products, or deliverables, potential costs, and gains, and success measurements.
  • Slack Time– The difference between either the latest start time and the earliest start time, or the latest finish time and the earliest finish time for activities in a project[‘s critical path.
  • Framework– An approach to project planning and execution in which portions of the project are divided by requirements or problem statements and addressed separately, but in a way that will integrate.

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