Understanding The Risk & Opportunity Module

Understanding The Risk & Opportunity Module

What the module is for, how risks and opportunities are structured, and what you can do with them

Contents

• 1. Introduction & Context
• 2. Key Features & Functions
• 3. Requirements
• 4. Step-by-Step Guide
• 5. Common Issues & Troubleshooting
• 6. Related Articles

1. Introduction & Context

The Risk & Opportunity module is where you log, assess, and manage the risks and opportunities across your organisation, so your team has a single, up-to-date view of them. Clew manages both risks and opportunities in the same module, and both hold the same core information: their causes, their consequences, and the controls in place to manage them.

Records are grouped into registers. What you can see and do in the module depends on your access to the records, so some actions described here may not appear for every user.

2. Key Features & Functions

Causes, consequences, and controls

Each record captures what could cause the risk or opportunity, what its consequences would be, and the controls that manage it. Controls are the enduring measures that keep a risk in check. Actions are the one-off pieces of work that start and close, for example procuring more training or switching a provider. Keeping that distinction clean is the difference between a register that records risk and one that manages it.

Two ways to structure a risk: simple and bow tie

Clew supports two approaches, which hold the same core information. The single difference is where your controls sit:

• Simple risk: all controls sit in one table, so you can see at a glance which are marked not effective.
• Bow tie risk: controls attach to specific causes and consequences, with a visual view that makes it obvious where protection is thin.

Simple suits most enterprise and operational risks and keeps control data consistent through the control library. Bow tie suits technical safety risks and top risks that justify deeper analysis. A practical route is to start a risk type on simple, then move your top risks to bow tie once the control data is trustworthy. For the full detail, including how to add causes, consequences, and controls under each approach, see Simple & Bowtie Risks in Related Articles.

3. Requirements

What you can do with records depends on your access level to the items: Create, Read, Update, Delete, Mass, and Share. Whether a risk type uses the simple or bow tie approach is set at system level: simple throughout, bow tie throughout, or a mix where one risk type defaults to simple and another to bow tie.

4. Step-by-Step Guide

Opening the module

1. Open Risks from the Modules menu.
2. Select the register from the register filters at the top. Your records display as a list.

Adding a risk or opportunity

1. Click the Add button.
2. Complete the record's fields, then save.
3. Add the record's causes, consequences, and controls. The exact steps depend on whether the risk is simple or bow tie, which is covered in Simple & Bowtie Risks.

5. Common Issues & Troubleshooting

6. Related Articles

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