John Lewis Partnership Improves Risk Management with Strategic Thought
The John Lewis Partnership has chosen Active Risk Manager (ARM), from Strategic Thought Group, for the integration and consolidation of its enterprise risk management (ERM) information and processes. The new software solution will also ensure consistency of risk management across the partnership’s retail businesses.
The John Lewis Partnership operates 27 department stores across the UK, johnlewis.com, 200 Waitrose supermarkets and Greenbee.com, a direct services company. The business is the UK’s largest example of worker co-ownership where all 69,000 staff are ‘partners’ in the business.
ARM was selected following a review of enterprise risk management systems and will be rolled out in the coming months. The first phase of implementation is due for completion by the end of April 2009.
Paul Clift, head of risk management at John Lewis, said: “Active Risk Manager has outstanding capability in terms of flexibility across all areas of the business and risk profiles. By using this powerful system, we will see greater efficiency as a result of its ability to collect and consolidate risk information. We also believe that ARM will enable us to achieve greater consistency of approach and content in our enterprise risk management processes.” According to Clift the existing risk management systems based on spreadsheets and other standard office systems were becoming too resource intensive to support.