As an early adopter of Ideagen Risk Management, University of the West of Scotland (UWS) moved from spreadsheet-based records to a single, searchable view of risk across every school and department, accelerating its risk maturity and winning genuine engagement from risk owners across the organization.
The challenge
UWS is a large, fast-moving institution with staff and priorities that shift as its strategy evolves. With over 24,000 students and 1,500 staff across five campuses, managing institutional risk across a fluid environment and keeping a clear, current picture had become increasingly difficult with the tools available.
Risk had been recorded in a combination of SharePoint and, at times, spreadsheets. While providing flexibility for customization to local needs, both approaches had real limitations. Spreadsheets depended on manual input and consolidation and inconsistency in style or approach across the multiple versions could change the integrity of the information. The burden of ensuring consistency, alignment to structures and owners was high and risked the exercise being considered an administrative burden rather than a professional, strategic activity.
Getting a consistent, accurate, organization-wide view of risk and analyzing it in any meaningful way was the central requirement. Leadership needed reliable, comparable information to support decisions at the highest levels of the university, local risk owners needed clarity and certainty on expectation and responsibilities, and the existing approach could not provide it dependably.
With spreadsheets, people add columns, people delete things and you lose that audit trail, and with it an understanding of responsibilities and accountabilities at each level.
The solution
UWS selected Ideagen Risk Management as its dedicated risk solution, becoming one of the very first organizations to adopt it. Several factors made it the right fit:
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Flexibility of structure
The ability to organise risk by School and Department and to reflect on the University's own way of working.
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Usability and visibility
A system that would take the administrative burden off the team and surface risk clearly across the organization.
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Analysis and reporting
The ability to extract data, charts and matrices that make risk information meaningful to people who do not work in risk day-to-day.
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Affordability
An accessible price point at a time when universities face significant financial pressure.
The goal was straightforward: replace fragile, inconsistent records with a single source of truth that could give leadership consistent, accurate and analyzable risk information.
Implementation and impact
The University developed its own internal user-guidance document to support rollout, then brought staff onto the system. Getting people signed up and moving was a streamlined process and feedback from across the university was positive. For a risk and resilience professional, the system proved intuitive in daily use and non-risk colleagues found it straightforward once they were working within it.
The impact went well beyond having a tidier record. The most significant change has been cultural:
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Cross-organization visibility
Critical teams such as Legal and Compliance can now see not only their own risks but risks across the organization that feed into their area, something that was not possible before.
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Better conversations
The system quickly analyses interconnectedness which helps promote discussions between schools and departments where controls and actions cut across different areas.
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Meaningful reporting
Charts, matrices and infographics make risk engaging and accessible to non-specialists.
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Strategic linkage
Operational risks can be linked to strategic goals, giving a holistic view of how risk connects to the University's Strategy 2030.
Colleagues are more proactively engaged in their role as risk managers. They are animated, engaged and feel heard now that they have a system.
The results
Since adopting Ideagen Risk Management, UWS has moved decisively along its risk maturity journey, faster than it could have otherwise, while embedding risk management as a shared, organization-wide discipline rather than a task owned by one team.
- Between 150 and 300 risks are now actively managed in a single, consistent system across the University.
- One to three hours, per person per week, saved, particularly on reporting and committee or board preparation.
- Reporting is now visual and meaningful, making compliance and engagement easier to track.
- Accelerated risk maturity, with stronger buy-in and engagement from risk owners across the organization.
The shift has changed how the wider University relates to risk. Once colleagues engage with the system, they value both having a proper system in place and the insight it gives them into risks beyond their own areas. Being able to return to risk owners with a clear, system-generated view of their risks has increased engagement and moved the whole organization forward.
Ideagen has provided us a platform for cultural change in risk management at the university – clear analytics, cross-institutional insight, and clarity for risk owners is helping build engagement and effectiveness every day.
The Ideagen Risk Management system gives me a clear strategic overview of risk across the Faculty, allowing me to identify emerging issues and monitor mitigation activities in real time. Compared with managing risks through spreadsheets, the system is far more user-friendly, responsive, and effective, while also enabling clear accountability by assigning risk ownership across the Faculty leadership team
Looking ahead
UWS sees risk management as a journey and intends to continue developing its use of Ideagen Risk Management, including exploring the incident management capabilities over time. As an early adopter, the team is keen to keep working closely with Ideagen to shape how the solution develops, sharing what they need and why, in a way that benefits other risk managers considering the same path.
What Jacqueline would tell others considering Ideagen Risk Management:
“Ideagen Risk Management is a valuable platform for structuring risk and compliance, and its value grows the more clearly you define your processes and drive user engagement.”
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