The original question often has little bearing on what was truly asked for. If you want to expand the effectiveness of risk management in your organization, pay close attention to the questions people ask of you. Then think of creative ways to answer-not just the question that was asked, but the underlying need as well. Expand the RMIS so that it touches more than the risk management department. Make it the single set of loss and exposure data that every one endorses and works with whether they are in operations, safety, accounting, finance or personnel.
Risk management has a very good story to tell, based on the recent success of workers' compensation.
The exploding costs of the 1980s were contained. The system did not collapse. This track record is an opportunity to show the risk management department as a partner in reducing cost. There may be different interpretations of the information, of course, but the important thing is to keep the risk management system at the center of preparing and working with data. This insures a role for risk management, regardless of what others say or do with the data.