The two halves.
Risk and Operations is one practice with two related halves. The risk side is the work of identifying what could go wrong, sizing the exposure, and putting the controls in place to manage it. The operations side is the work of building the processes that turn intent into output reliably, at the scale the company needs. Both halves draw on the same operational pattern recognition; the risk side asks "what could break?" and the operations side asks "what is breaking now, and how do we redesign it?" The practice serves leadership teams that have outgrown the founder-led operating model and need to install the infrastructure of a real company without losing the founder-era cadence.
The risk side.
Enterprise risk assessment.
Four to eight weeks. A structured assessment of the risks that could materially harm the company: customer concentration, supplier dependency, key-person risk, regulatory exposure, cybersecurity, financial controls, business continuity. The deliverable is a risk register with sized exposures, a prioritized mitigation plan, and an ownership map.
Operational risk and controls.
Six to twelve weeks. The financial controls (segregation of duties, approval thresholds, reconciliation cadence), the operational controls (incident response, change management, quality assurance), and the governance controls (board cadence, committee structures, escalation paths). The deliverable is an operating-controls document that names the controls, the owners, and the testing cadence.
Governance design.
Three to six weeks. The board structure (composition, committees, cadence), the leadership-team operating cadence, the decision-rights map, and the escalation architecture. The deliverable is a governance document and a transition plan.
The operations side.
Process redesign.
Variable, typically four to twelve weeks per process. The end-to-end review of a process that is not working — hiring, onboarding, performance review, customer support, vendor management, billing, collections — and the redesign that produces the output the company needs at the scale the company is running. The deliverable is a redesigned process with named owners, written documentation, and a transition plan.
Transformation execution.
Six to eighteen months, typically as a fractional engagement (see Fractional Executive). A senior operator runs the operational transformation alongside the company's leadership team: ERP migration, sales-operations rebuild, finance-function redesign, geographic expansion. The deliverable is the new operating model in production, with the team owning it.
Scaling infrastructure.
Three to nine months. The operating infrastructure required as the company crosses the founder-led-to-scale threshold: the role architecture, the management layer, the metric architecture, the meeting structure, the documentation standard. The deliverable is a company that operates at the next scale rather than a founder-era company stretched into a larger shape.
The deliverables.
A risk register with sized exposures and named owners. An operating-controls document. A governance design. Redesigned processes with named owners and written documentation. A scaling infrastructure that fits the company's stage. A transformation plan with milestones, decision dates, and an honest read on the timeline.
When to engage.
Two signals are common. The first is a leadership team that is busy operationally but cannot point to which processes are durable and which depend on individual heroics. The dependence on heroics is the failure mode of most growth-stage companies, and it is the symptom that risk and operations work addresses. The second is a board or auditor request for the risk register or the controls document, often ahead of a financing or a transaction. Both situations are common, and both are addressable in a structured engagement.
What we do not do.
Asta does not provide internal-audit attestation or external-audit services. We design controls and assess risk, but we do not opine on financial statements or issue audit reports. If the engagement requires that work, we recommend a firm whose practice fits.