Workiva
WK]

Businesses today are fraught with many risks and uncertainties that could cost them a fortune. “Understanding risks and weighing them against the expected benefits provides management with critical information to help drive the ongoing strategies and objectives of an organization,” says Matt Rizai, Chairman and CEO, Workiva [NYSE:WK]–an Ames, Iowa-based company offering an end-to-end solution for Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) functions to effectively mitigate enterprise risk. The firm’s cloud-based productivity platform, Wdesk, helps thousands of enterprises to collect, monitor, and understand business data with control and accountability.

“The collection, assessment, prioritization, and reporting of risk data and information are the core functions of ERM that are covered within our Wdesk platform,” states Rizai. By streamlining and standardizing the assessment, collection and reporting processes, Wdesk gives risk managers more time to analyze data, conduct in-depth risk reviews, and collaborate across the organization to better understand ongoing risk management issues. The platform's proprietary word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications are integrated and built upon a data management engine, which offers synchronized data, controlled collaboration, granular permissions and a full audit trail. The platform helps companies keep pace with the demands for speed and accuracy in business data and financial information.

Wdesk has an innovative and real-time live-linking technology that provides a competitive advantage for its users because it enables them to integrate and control all of their business risk data, regardless of format or location. All the data can be linked from a single source and any change–whether in numbers or text–automatically updates across all occurrences. “Wdesk can handle thousands of people changing data at the same time and always end up with the correct results,” assures Rizai.

Furthermore, Wdesk’s permission controls allow administrators to determine who can see what information and where contributors can input their data.

Wdesk can handle thousands of people changing data at the same time and always end up with the correct results

This makes Wdesk a secured workspace where teams can collaborate together to build documents and reports. “To have a robust risk management framework, it is equally important that your audit and control functions complement your risk function,” says Rizai. Another area that is very closely related to risk management is audit and controls, which includes Wdesk solutions for SOX and internal controls management and the broader area of audit management.

Today, more than 2,500 companies use Wdesk for a wide variety of business data reports and processes in accounting, finance, risk management, and audit management. For instance, the company has recently worked with a publicly listed company, Bel Fuse Inc., which was facing a challenge in managing their business data due to recent mergers and acquisitions. Workiva assisted the company with its secure, flexible, and cost-efficient Wdesk platform, which allowed its team to better collaborate across the globe to share and report consistent information. Bel Fuse saved over $500,000 by using Wdesk in 2015 by not adding additional headcount, reducing the number of external consultants, and lowering travel costs.

“Our innovation is driven by learning from our customers, building quick prototypes that allow them to get a sense of our direction, and iterating on our development until we’re able to deliver a solution that is incredibly useful,” highlights Rizai. Workiva’s research and development teams deliver solutions that are driven by a deep understanding of the customers’ challenges in risk management. Workiva has customers in nearly every industry who use Wdesk to improve hundreds of different business processes every day. “Yet they all have one thing in common: they need to trust their data, and that’s why they turn to Wdesk,” concludes Rizai.