An Innovation in Risk Anticipation

Monitoring the issues

After two decades of learning the hard way, most large companies have become pretty adept at handling crises, and are now ready to take their skills a stage further. For larger businesses and organisations crisis management as a business discipline is coming of age. They now need to be able to spot where the next crisis is coming from.

At the same time, stakeholders are increasingly insisting companies make broader-based assessments of the business risks that face them. Due diligence is no longer just about finance and insurable risks.

To help them meet this challenge Weber Shandwick’s London-based issues management and international affairs practice has launched a new initiative called Global Issues Prediction System (GIPS), an exclusive management tool that provides continuous intelligence and evaluation on emerging issues.

GIPS was in development for more than two years with external partner CMi Consulting. The system is driven by an online monitoring database that is designed to help clients track and predict the potential impact of emerging issues around the globe.

Clients can specify a particular issue they are interested in - for instance, the risk that legal limitations on food advertising may result from proof of an involuntary link between obesity and certain food ingredients - and the system shows the changing scale of risk attached to that issue, as it develops, by automatically evaluating the likely level of potential adverse media and consumer reaction.

The primary difference between GIPS and other monitoring systems is the method of evaluating "media triggers" and "consumer fright factors". These triggers and factors have been fine-tuned from detailed academic research into how the media handle issues and how consumers perceive risk. This knowledge enables GIPS to draw conclusions and predict how a company is likely to be most exposed to adverse risk in terms of public perception.

Traditionally, risk assessment has been limited to financial and commercial arenas. This new system broadens the risk horizon to include reputational risk. Because the system uses standardised evaluation, it is possible to compare the rate of change across different global markets – making GIPS even more attractive to large multi-national clients.

Weber Shandwick has huge reserves of knowledge and experience in most industry sectors in the key markets round the world. This new system aims to leverage this knowledge base by bringing it together in a framework which can add value specifically by virtue of its predictive nature.

By David Walker, director, issues management and international affairs practice, Weber Shandwick, London.

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