EADS consolidates its risk process using
Active Risk Manager.

Overview of EADS

EADS is one of the world’s leading international aeronautical, space and defence industry companies. The organisation has a holding group governance structure based on four divisions: Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter. EADS is a multi-national and multi-cultural company which relies on a unique community of passionate people united under a common entity, driven by innovation and pride in its world-class products.

The Challenge before Active Risk Manager

EADS was formed from a number of existing European companies all with a different approach to risk management. This resulted in numerous risk silos each with its own ecosystem, language and practices. This fragmented view of risk led to duplication of work especially when a group-wide view of risk was required. Therefore in 2008, EADS management introduced a mission for true enterprise risk management (ERM) to address:

• The need for higher risk consciousness, meaning that risk and opportunity management should be a part of the corporate culture and understood as everyone’s task
• The need for a common language for risk to save time and confusion
• The ability to overcome isolated risk pictures – to get a full view of risks in multiple programmes, functions and processes to provide an aggregated group view of risk
• The need to have common objectives and understand the impact of potential risks on those objectives

The Solution with Active Risk Manager

One pillar to reach these goals was the decision to use a group wide IT tool to support the Enterprise Risk Management approach within EADS. As a result EADS selected Active Risk Manager (ARM) from Active Risk to help consolidate and integrate enterprise risk management across the group, to present a meaningful view of risk and to assist management decision making.

Following a pilot phase, in 2010 ARM 5 provided the functionality and security EADS required to pull together risk management information across multiple networks and entities. Security was important to EADS, because of its many government contracts in the military sector where certain principles have to be met.
Active Risk Manager is now the first group-wide standard software implementation with the same base configuration within EADS. The solution achieves the objectives set out in the mission for enterprise risk management for integration both at a risk and company level.

Benefits from using Active Risk Manager:

• Active Risk Manager will support thousands of users on a daily basis which means it is a robust and well accepted system
• The aggregation and consolidation of data over many networks and server systems delivers an integrated risk management and reporting process
• A common risk language saves time and ensures accuracy of data
• The flexibility and security of Active Risk Manager supports the specific needs of customers especially those in the military sector
• ARM supports the COSO standard which was mandatory in a programme-driven company such as EADS
• ARM enables compliance with the legal requirements of the Dutch corporate governance code (EADS is registered in The Netherlands)

The Results from Using Active Risk Manager

EADS has built a strong risk management network based on Active Risk Manager. The Group has achieved greater transparency and as a result has reduced duplication and now benefits more from strong best practice and knowledge sharing. ARM provides a full view of risk in programmes, functions and processes. Risk is aggregated to provide a meaningful picture to facilitate improved decision making, therefore maintaining business value while adding competitive advantage. ARM ensures that the corporate objectives set out in the mission for enterprise risk are being met for raised risk awareness, a common risk language and risk objectives and the ability to provide an accurate consolidated view of risk.