We have been busy with updates to the riskwiki (and the BPC SurveyManager library and BPC SurveyManager Maintenance WebClient).  The riskwiki has had various improvements and updates to the survey manager documentation including a long list of examples and explanations of the input controls and the first of our tutorials on creating particular survey layouts.

The tutorials are at:

BPC SurveyManager Tutorials

 We will be adding more as time permits.

The illustrated list of input controls is at http://riskwiki.bishopphillips.com/index.php?title=BPC_SurveyManager_-_Questions_and_Input_Controls

Among the new features recently added to the BPC SurveyManager libraries is a new password protected portal mode, so you can  now selectively surface surveys in each organisation to a simple portal without writing a portal survey of your own.   We have added more capabilities to the auto publish functions so that you can have anonymous responders for any survey by setting a flag, and impose login requirements per survey without adding user login questions at the start.

The portal mode will be particularly useful to teachers running classed based surveys, because you can now use the portal on a class wide basis in a school based computer for all students to concurrently access a class based survey without you having to publish to them first or send invitations.

There is lots more coming to survey manager over the next few weeks so keep tuned.   Among the changes coming to the SM library is a significant expansion of Survey Manager’s ability to directly interrogate and update risk, insurance claims and incident tables for those using BPC SurveyManager as part of their BPC RiskManager application suite.

The BPC SurveyManager Maintenance WebClient is getting some new features to expand the range of surveys that can be built with it.  We have kept it artificially simplified now for a number of years as it was always intended to be an entry point solution, but the increasingly complex surveys some of the heavier survey manager clients wish to create mean that we really must make more of the survey engines huge range of capabilities available in the web client.   We have recently completed an analysis of the types of clients using our survey technologies heavilly, and those of you making the heaviest and best use of the tech are also those attempting the most complex of surveys.  

The current web client just does not do the underlying survey engine justice and we feel it is time to really let it stretch its legs.   We will try and keep the over-all feeling of simplicity the same, and in fact some things will seem to get simpler because the current release tries makes some things just too mindless by doing a whole lot for you in the background.

Even so, we are told, our web client is still way more powerful than most similar survey clients, but if you like the current one, just wait for the enhancements coming.

Oh, and don’t forget, that we host surveys on our servers, so you can contract us to manage your survey needs on your behalf.  The service includes your own database, the survey engine, emailing invitations, the portal, at least daily backups, 24 hour monitoring, responder assistance, maintenance of the data and content and even assistance with creation of surveys.  All clients are encouraged to try out this extremely economical service as an alternative to doing it yourself.  The distributed nature of BPC SurveyManager means you can exchange surveys and data with our servers to feed back into your risk systems, for example (or just point your survey manager or risk manager clients at our servers in addition to using the web client).

The release off V6.2.5 was delayed a couple of months because under the covers we were putting in a huge range of changes to the database to enable addition or improvement of a very large range of features. Some of these capabilities existed in earlier versions of RiskManager, but were dropped with the release of the completely re-written and redesigned V6 solution. Others were phased out even earlier (like probability based risk models – in Version 2, Bayesian decision trees – in Version 1 – 1996! ) .

Version 6 was design around the A/NZ Risk Management standard and a poll of what clients were actually using, and with the objective of vastly expanding the depth and versatility of the facilities in use, rather than breadth of features. So with V6 what is there is really useful and complete, rather than almost useful. Not all of the feature retirement decisions were correct, and for a large number the intention was not feature termination, but feature resting.

Curiously, because BPC RiskManager Express is actually based on the RiskMan V5 code base, a number of these features – like Compliance, Risk Milestones, and MS Word Reporting are in BPC RiskManager Express, which is the ‘Entry Level’ system, yet were missing from the V6.0 release. BPC RiskManager Express got it’s screen makeover with last years release (actually it was started in the release of the year before and completed last year).  Version 6, got its Vista screen make-over in 2008 with release of V6.2.0  (Enrima Edition).

In the years since V6.0 was released the world of Governance has advanced significantly, and many of the capabilities we phased out over the years are now becoming fashionable again. So…with the release of V6.2.5 we decided to put back into the database most of the features that had been retired in earlier years, feed them some steroids and add a raft of new capabilities (like corporate planning support), together with a Vista/Office 2007 style rework of the screen look and feel.  Buried in your V6.2.5 databases are 297 changes (some times fields, sometimes entire tables) just waiting to be surfaced to the client.

Over the next six months we will be progressively surfacing these capabilities to the V6 client. Things that are getting added or reworked include:

• Corporate Planning
• Compliance
• Multi-base consolidation
• Workflow
• Scripting
• Compliance Document Management
• Assertion based control assessment
• Control modelling
• Internal Audit Planning and Assessments
• Assets (including buildings)
• Scheduling
• Probability calculations
• What-If analysis
• Import and Export
• And much more…

Now I know, some of you will look at that list and say about individual items: “I’ve got that now! How is that being added?” . Well, note that I said “added or improved”.  Existing versions of these features are getting a good dose of steroids; transforming the system from a register and risk/compliance maintenance tool to a planning and analysis tool and full corporate governance management system.

We gave the process of governance a significant rethink over the last few years and realised that to make it work from the risk management dimension as an aid to an organisation, rather than a standards compliance exercise, ERM has to start with the corporate planning side of the business and flow down to the business processes and ultimately to compliance management, with Internal Audit floating across all dimensions validating the reliability of the strategic and tactical control frameworks.

Senior executives, therefore, should use the Governance system to create and report against their corporate and business plans, and in so doing design (or enable the designing of) the risk framework against the strategic and tactical plans. The system therefore has to see risks, not just as a static demographic and environment responses, but as a temporal and cognitive response to both the current and planned positioning of the organisation.

…And this is where we are going.