To Buy or Build Risk Management Software ? From the CEO - Andrew Howarth

A question on the minds of many when looking into Risk Management Software for your company/organisation, are you better off buying an commercially available off-the-shelf product like Risk Management and Safety Systems (RMSS) or are you more suited to build your own? In this article, we will explain the advantages of the RMSS suite and disadvantages of ‘having a go’ at building your own.

Risk Management and Safety Systems (RMSS) Suite can be purchased for a fraction of the price required to build a product of the same functionality. With a small initial investment, an Enterprise Risk Intelligence solution is provided with the functionality and a framework that addresses the integrated needs of Risk, Compliance, Claims and Event Management across the Enterprise. The Rmss suite is available on any form of device and is designed dynamically to change its parameters to provide the best possible user interface and experience dependant upon the device being used.

As mentioned before, RMSS’ Enterprise Risk Intelligence Software is an commercially available off -the-shelf product, meaning that our Risk Reduction Software will immediately work straight out of the box. The Risk Management Software contains rich content following Australian and International Standard workflows. We have enhanced the product with over 20 years of experience in the market, best practice and user group contributions. This means, if you don’t have existing specific processes such as forms, terminology, workflow, assessment models, investigations processes, audits etc. You can immediately use the content that is contained within RMSS Suit from day one.

However, importantly, If you do have existing content and knowledge which has been developed already within your organisation, changes can be made available from day one, using our easy-to-use self managed interface. These configurations are based on security groups user permissions that will drive workflow, escalation, notifications, forms and terminology based on existing practises and processes within your organisation. None of these configurations require software development or re-engineering. The RMSS suite has been pre-built using user wizards that allow this flexibility to be available from the first day of installation. This technology is what makes RMSS unique and an industry leader in Innovation and Risk Management Software.

The RMSS Suite has a low fixed cost for support and maintenance, therefore, removing the effort, cost and headaches associated with providing this internally. The initial cost of the RMSS Suite, its support and maintenance is amortised almost immediately.

Regular maintenance and enhancements are included in the annual license for the RMSS Suite and the solution can be expanded upon to facilitate further organisational growth. The RMSS Suite is designed around the highly structured and critical processes surrounding risk, event, claims and compliance management across the organisation. Specific design features include; high attention to ease of use for non-technical users, and a high degree of flexibility to adapt to an organisation’s specific business processes.

The RMSS Suite is an N-tier architecture application that is implemented using highly flexible and customisable business rules. This high quality product design offers simple installation and integration into an organisation’s existing IT environment. The application’s front end can be easily customised to suit the organisation’s requirements.

Our Risk Management and Safety Systems Suite is a highly secure environment, with a multi-layered approach to security of content from external and internal threats. The Suite is a market hardened solution that has been commercially available within the local market for many years.  Given this, there is a vast pool of risk and compliance industry professionals with existing RMSS Suite user experience.

RMSS Suite represents many years of research and development around risk, event, claims and compliance management and is aligned to a broad variety of heavily regulated industry verticals. The application has evolved through many technology platforms up to its current Microsoft technology (ASP.NET) and is in use by some of the largest organisations in Australia. 

Risk Management and Safety Systems are partnered with Macquarie Telecom Hosting to ensuring our cloud (SaaS) offerings are housed within Australia’s most advanced and secure Hosting centre.

RMSS’ experienced consulting team and mature implementation process, ensuring successful implementation of the solution into an organisation’s technical environment with seamless integration into the relevant business processes being automated and augmented. Implementation can begin almost immediately to provide quick returns for the organisation.  

The RMSS Suite is built by risk, compliance, event and claims management professionals. 

RMSS’ has an experienced product management and development team working on ideas contributed by a variety of inputs and organisations that all use the same software solution (source code) 24/7. 

Organisations can be certain that the soft coding built into the RMSS Suite allows rapid solution implementation, aligned with key business objectives and minimal change management. The organisation can focus on its core business as minimal internal resources are required. 

Vs Building Risk Management In-House

Significant development effort is required to build and implement a custom solution, which can be even more costly to successfully integrate a custom solution into the organisation’s business processes. This translates directly to costs in resources and time, which in most cases are better spent elsewhere. 

In-house development of a custom solution infers that the organisation has the necessary development skills and expertise required to build such a product. Aside from development, skills are required in highly specific business process design, usability studies, best practice research and testing on a wide range of platforms. This type of expertise can be highly expensive.

Furthermore, there are invariably underestimated efforts and costs in maintaining the solution to meet growing organisational demands and within the resolution of issues. This effort is not only in the solution development but also in support of the solution.

As the product is yet to be developed, the product will be immature and take time to evolve. The organisation will not know what the finished software system will be like until after they have invested significant time and money in development.

Such a product requires good architecture and design to ensure that the solution can easily be extended to meet future needs. A poorly designed solution will require significant effort to enhance the product and additional features or enhancements. 

Additional development is also required to support future basic requirements such as the introduction and support of new operating systems and users. The same holds true for new features and functionality that may be added as required.

Because organisational data is not stored in a structured retention repository, security and access can easily be compromised and appropriate data retention cannot be assured. 

One of the most overlooked and underestimated aspects of such a solution is the complexity in change management services required to ensure that the solution is appropriately integrated into the organisation’s existing business processes. Attempting to force a change in these processes to cater for limitations in the software at such a high level in an organisation can be extremely disruptive and counter-productive.  The organisation requires skills in this area, which have been tested and refined through many similar implementations.  

There are countless studies that exemplify the difficulties of this approach, in many cases representing a sunk cost in the millions of dollars which has ultimately been written off in favour of a professionally developed off the shelf solution such as the RMSS Suite.  

The result is a custom solution, which may present a high ongoing cost to the organisation and inherent design limitations which fail to completely augment or automate business processes; increasingly so as the organisation naturally changes and the software is not able to adapt adequately enough.  

If you have any questions about our Risk Management Software, Please contact us via email at

Written by Andrew Howarth - CEO