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Why choose us?

  • At Harvard Advisory Solutions, our mission is simply “to make decision-making clearer and easier”. We assist you to see the context, the horizon, and the opportunities, with enhanced clarity, so you can select your next move with greater piece of mind.

  • We understand that there is a stark difference between risk and uncertainty. It is as different as night and day. Risk is a subset of the wider uncertainty spectrum, being the manageable subset of uncertainty. Strategies can be adopted to either minimise adverse consequences from a risk, maximise the opportunities a risk presents, and/or influence the likelihood of either.

Our approach focusses on what we call the Maghami 4T Model (M4TM) as outlined below: Today: Where are we today in relation to project risk governance people, process, systems capability/capacity, including documentation and structure? Tomorrow: Where does best practice say we need to be? Transition: Given the resources available, what does a realistic transition map to achieve desired state consist of? Timeline: Given current commitments, what is a realistic timeframe for delivery of the transition plan? Download our Capability Statement to find out more.
  • Leadership & Governance

    Boards and Executive Teams are increasingly challenging their assurance and integrity functions to strengthen brand protection, through effective governance, integrity and misconduct management. Chief assurance officers are being request to demonstrate the value that brand management adds to an organisation's reputation, as well as identifying the opportunities that strong assurance management brings. Chief conduct and risk officers are under ever-more scrutiny to ensure the identification, assessment and management of risk, across conduct, integrity, governance and strategy, serves to strengthen the organisation's Social and Communities engagement capability.
  • Appetite

    Scrutiny from a regulator – displayed through legislation, cabinet papers, policies, parliamentary/media briefings – gives an insight into the operating environment a business finds itself in. These forums also provide hints as to industry risk appetites, and the flow-on effect of an industry’s risk appetite onto the organisation’s appetite to take on new risk. A regulator may suggest the revision of risk culture as a starting solution for any deficiencies in risk governance, and in doing so, an organisation’s risk appetite is scrutinised. We can assist a business to develop sound risk appetite governance frameworks.
  • Independent oversight of Culture, integrity & Misconduct

    Harvard Advisory Solutions recognises that an organisation's reputation is priceless, takes years to establish, relies on the support of communities to protect, requires the trust of community members to engage, and... can be lost in a heartbeat. Over the years we've assisted numerous private and public organisations in strengthening their oversight of social governance, culture, integrity and misconduct management capability, through large and complex independent reviews and recommendations management/implementation.
  • Strategy

    We can assist in reviewing the way your organisation relates risk decision-making back to strategy, to highlight the customer’s real needs, and building the capacity to respond. We help business understand where it stands today, where it'd like to be tomorrow, develop a realistic transition plan based on capacity/capability, anchored to an achievable timeline.
  • Business Process Optimisation (BPO)

    Companies are endlessly searching for ways to increase process efficiency, whilst protecting critical business processes. Being first-to-market isn’t necessarily wise, if it comes at the cost of competitiveness, quality and customer focus. Firms can be both sustainable as well as process efficient through combining the leading project management methodologies with lean principles, to identify pathways for process optimisation, supported by methodical change management leadership.
  • Operations

    Harvard Advisory Solutions partners with you to identify transformation opportunities, building on existing cultural strengths, promoting healthy risk conduct, providing strategies to manage your most important third-party relationships, whilst capitalising on available intelligence to enable greater certainty in decision making.
  • Projects

    Every Project is a process that delivers significant change to an established system. Traditional processes, cultures, systems/platforms, are all impacted (some positively, others adversely) by a Project, and this will have a material effect on the risk profile of a business. Our experience has shown us that 90% of project risks arise not because of a failure to hold workshops, or a failure to actions to mitigate risks. It is true that project risk management focuses upon minimising cost, schedule or quality risks, however, these in itself are not the reasons why project risks materialise. We advocate a structured approach to delivery project certainty, through the alignment of people, technology, strategy, process and knowledge, to manage the key uncertainty interfaces that influence objectives.
  • Maturity Assessments

    It is vital for an organisation to understand whether its risk management function (culture, governance, processes, policies, practices) meets the current needs of the business (Board, CEO expectations), as well as serves to support the business’ vision (3 and/or 5 year plan). Undertaking a benchmark maturity assessment will serve to demonstrate where the risk governance framework lies in comparison to best practice in the similar industries.
  • Metrics

    It is vital for an organisation’s strategy to be supported by strong risk analytics and metrics. Analytical insights can assist a business to transform markets, shaping the way a market responds to a user group. At its full potential, strong analytics can bring a market to your business, for your business to set the trend that others follow. Market enablers/disrupters in the form of social media, mobile data, and increasingly, bringing a service to a home (e.g. bringing the hotel experience to a home), has the potential to reform traditional business structures. Most companies now understand the power that comes with leveraging off smart analytics to accommodate social change.
  • Controls Effectiveness

    Controls Effectiveness Assessment (CEA) can be applied to assess the effectiveness of current controls within a business. It allows an organisation to have greater insight as well as oversight of their internal controls capability. Once risks have been identified, it is likely that some of these risks will already have controls in place for their ongoing monitoring. We have found that 80% of risks have controls in place that are either irrelevant (do not address the risk in question), out-dated (not adapted to current operating context), ill-defined (unclear, ambiguous) or are not time/metrics bound (review dates, assigned responsibility, escalation routes, close out dates). We can provide a business with an independent overview of the effectiveness of proposed current risk controls.
  • Business Continuity & Crisis Management

    Ready, Respond, Recover (RRR)

    Being ready for a crisis depends upon identifying the most likely set of crisis relevant to the business, and is dependent upon having a full understanding of the operating context and interdependencies of the business. Harvard Advisory Solutions will sit with key Executive Leadership Team members to understand the critical dependencies upon which the business relies. The maturity curve of an incident spans initial surprise, pressurised decision-making, strategy disruption, intense media/stakeholder demands, overloading of remaining systems/people, regulator pressure, loss of key staff members (voluntary leave) and business paralysis. A failure to address these will cause trust, reputation and employee confidence to be undermined.
  • Workplace Health & Safety (WHS) governance

    Suffering a workplace incident can be devastating. Whether it concerns employee conduct (bullying, harassment, conflict or discrimination), through to the safety governance culture of the business, Harvard Advisory Solutions can assist your business to ensure it meets all the regulatory work health and safety obligations required. This will lead to a reduction in employee leave taken. We work with your Health and Safety Representatives to review the sustainability of the safety governance structure, identifying trends to create long-term improvements. We do this by making the ‘intent’ personal. The buy-in of employees to be a part of the ‘my safety journey’ is critical to a successful safety strategy.

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