Tracker Networks is an innovative and growing 35-person software and services firm based in Toronto, Canada, with clients in over 20 countries around the world. One of the firm’s core products, Essential ERM, is an advanced, next-generation enterprise risk management (ERM) software system that helps boards, executives and their management teams balance opportunities and risks in a way that maximizes organizational performance. The initial launch of Essential ERM was a great success, establishing over 700 users worldwide in 1.5 years. Now, the company is seeking to enhance their product to move into new and expanded market sectors. In order to prepare their solution for growth and improve their offerings to current clients, they have come to CENGN to complete a Data Centre project.

Harnessing Risk Management

Business is inherently risky. All organizations assume some level of risk to pursue their mission and objectives. There are many factors to consider when steering a business through uncharted territory, and a wrong move could cause reverberations throughout the entire organization. With powerhouse companies constantly competing with one another, a mistake can be very costly. Even something that does not directly lose a company money can still lead to disruptions within operations, impacting the time a product takes to get to market, how services are delivered to clients, or stalling many other business functions which will impact overall revenue.

In order to chart the correct path, executives require information which will in turn, inform their strategic objectives and trajectory for growth and success.  This involves both risk mitigation as well as proper prioritization and planning to take advantage of future opportunities. Enterprise risk management has evolved into an essential best practice that helps leadership teams to make strategic decisions and manage strategy execution.

One of the challenges of ERM, however, is that risk management software packages are traditionally complicated and difficult to maintain. This makes them a poor fit for use by the executive and business users that are often central to ERM processes.

In contrast, the Essential ERM system is purpose-built for ERM. It is designed to mask its underlying sophistication with intuitive, easy-to-use screens and workflows that guide business users through the risk management process. Whether an organization is launching their first ERM program, or taking their existing program to the next level, solutions can be established and running in a matter of hours.

Essential ERM continuously pulls data from multiple online sources, as well as internal databases, to find the largest factors that would interfere with the customer firm’s strategic objectives. It then generates reports that could be used by executives to make the best choice to navigate the risks. This significantly cuts down on the time required for manual research and arming firms with the relevant knowledge to make decisions.

Not only does Essential ERM collect the right information seamlessly, it provides options and advises on best next steps for the company by comparing the variables and prioritizing the risks that can impact the path an organization might take. Essential ERM’s ability to identify, process, communicate and help plan for risks is what cements this solution as a truly strategy-centric ERM tool.

Tracker Networks is planning for major growth.  Currently, their ERM solution has found a home for companies mostly in the finance, tech and service sectors, but the company has a new target audience in mind; the healthcare industry.

Expanding to New Markets

Just like any other industry, the healthcare sector is full of risk. It should come as no surprise that organizations within the industry have established ERM programs, however, Tracker Networks has discovered that there are a number of systemic risks that are unaccounted for in traditional healthcare ERM. These include risks that extend beyond individual institutions and are too big for any one organization to manage on their own.

One example is shifting demographics, caused by urbanization and aging populations. Any change in demographics can alter the prevalent health issues and needed emphasis on different resources. Issues like these have a massive impact on strategic planning and prioritization.

There are many other systemic risks that can impact healthcare that are not being properly identified by the current ERM software. For instance, the compromising of health networks through cyber attacks or failure of shared systems is a massive risk, especially for hospitals where everything needs to be up and running in order to save lives. Another risk is a change in funding models, which can impact any organization but is especially problematic in the health sector.

Bolstering the Service Offering

This need for a more robust and comprehensive ERM solution to manage systemic risk in the healthcare sector inspired Tracker Networks to further tailor their solution to the needs of the healthcare industry.

One feature Tracker Networks is implementing is a web-based federated risk management platform. Basically, Essential ERM software will allow users from different organizations to collaborate and share data in a controlled and confidential manner, aggregating far more data than before to identify and manage risk. The solution’s communal data-pool will give the individual customers even better predictions, as Essential ERM will be able to provide advice based on the experience of related organizations and provide a platform for sector collaboration.

While this is designed with the healthcare industry in mind, this new functionality will be a powerful feature for customers from many industries in which collaboration on systemic risks is desirable.

Validating Essential ERM for Market Growth

As the federated feature of the ERM solution is a new development for Tracker Networks, they have come to CENGN to scale test the functionality of there solution and do baseline performance testing. Tracker Networks wants to be able to validate that their enhanced Essential ERM with its new and improved functions can handle many hundreds of simultaneous clients on the federated system. With this proof point, they can confidently enter the market.

To meet their goals, CENGN has provisioned Tracker Networks with a project space on the CENGN Testbed. The ERM platform will be hosted on a CENGN Cloud Tenancy through two virtual machines (VMs), one running ERM’s database server and another its web server. Having these two servers separated provides Tracker Networks the ability to have isolated monitoring on both components, so they can better understand the resources being used by both servers and identify where bottlenecks lie in their solution. Clients are simulated through additional VMs, sending traffic and requests to the platform in order to measure how Essential ERM functions as the number of customers is scaled up.

Accelerating Commercial Growth with CENGN

Testing and validation requires expensive infrastructure and large amounts of setup time. CENGN provides a ready-made testing environment so companies can take advantage of our infrastructure services in a private and secure cloud tenancy. Tracker Networks has taken advantage of these services for their project.

The company will be able to leverage CENGN’s Customer Solution Engineers’ depth of knowledge and expertise in next generation networking. Having the engineer’s guidance through each step of their project from set up, to testing, to conclusions.

Completing this project will open up many new opportunities for Tracker Networks. They will be able to break into new markets, which will lead to new growth for the company. They will also have first mover advantage, as they will be the first to offer the much-needed solution of a federated ERM software as a service (SaaS) to the healthcare industry.

Tracker Networks is a growing Canadian business that is using the services at CENGN through the Next Generation Network Program (NGNP). The NGNP is a Government of Ontario program offered through a partnership between CENGN and the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) that is providing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Ontario access to the CENGN Testbed. CENGN’s digital infrastructure is connecting SMEs like Tracker Networks to state-of-the-art equipment and network services, which will allow these companies to test and validate their solutions. 

About the Author

CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives technology innovation and industry growth through our testbed, technical expertise, talent development, and partner ecosystem. Through our projects, CENGN enables small and medium Canadian Enterprises to test and validate promising technologies, removing barriers to product commercialization and accelerating market growth.

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