STARK Group

The challenge

With trust built into the DNA of the STARK Group, the modernization of their risk management and internal control system was vital to optimize the process across the group – especially as it added entities in new markets. They have decentralized operating model based on the philosophy “Local ownership. Global leadership”.

Ragna Kr. Jóhannsdóttir, Group Head of Internal Controls and Enterprise Risk Management at STARK Group, wanted a platform that could help her team move from spreadsheets to a more digitally streamlined procedure for risk & internal controls.

Because despite having established risk & control processes, STARK's internal controls were largely manual, paper-based, and varied across different countries and entities. Therefore, the biggest challenge was how to efficiently and digitally gather all information from different entities. This fragmentation made it challenging to consolidate information and provide comprehensive reporting to their management and other stakeholders.  

STARK needed a solution that could help them continuously prove their diligence in their risk & controls, as well as demonstrate their efforts in an auditable fashion. And with different systems across markets and entities, the right fit needed to have a high degree of flexibility in the risk & control set up.

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The solution

As the champion leading this project internally at STARK Group, Ragna felt confident that Impero had all the necessary functionalities to modernize internal controls throughout the organization. The Impero platform was an obvious choice for STARK as it:

1. Allowed them to centrally document their risk management across entities and countries  

2. Provided a modern, efficient and reportable way to perform internal controls across the group  

3. Delivered a high level of flexibility for the administrators to work with local entities on digitizing their risk and control processes, without compromising on their tried-and-true processes that worked for their local entities on a diverse IT landscape

4. Empowered administrators to ask for specific documentation, which in turn was easily uploaded by control performers in Impero’s audit-ready platform

After evaluating several tools and providers, they chose Impero as their platform of choice for their risk management and internal control system. Looking back, Ragna reflected: “When we chose Impero back in 2020 for STARK, one of the key components for us choosing Impero was the possibility of having it help us mature and expand.”

The results

As STARK grows, they continue to expand their use of Impero and in the calendar year 2025, they have nearly 5,000 controls scheduled in the system – a 20% increase vs. the previous year.  

“Impero helps me follow along in what my coworkers are doing, without having to disturb them in their every day work,” says Ragna and her team continues to successfully administrate Impero across the organization. Along with her team, STARK Group enjoys the efficiency and time saved with Impero versus manually going through several types of control completions and documents.

With everything in one place, it means that today properly document risks and ensuring dependable reporting is a seamless process in Impero. Ragna noted that: “We wouldn’t be able to do the kind of risk assessment and risk assurance that we provide to our top management here without Impero at all.”

The user-friendliness and simplicity of setting up meaningful control workflows has increased transparency and overall governance throughout the organization.  

“We don’t have the same systems. We don’t have the same organization. But we are still able to work in a unified way towards covering our risks with properly designed controls.”

Further, the modernization of internal controls has given a sense of relevancy to STARK employees when using Impero. All processes and controls are continuously assessed, which means there are no irrelevant controls being sent out.  

"With Impero’s flexible control setup, it is possible to give the users different options when completing a control. If necessary, I can ask for documentation, and I also like giving users the opportunity to explain why a control has not been performed or by the deadline. I often find that there is a good reason, and it gives the control performer a sense of being heard so that we are not doing anything without a purpose. Impero makes this possible with just a few clicks and with quick and great overview,” noted Ragna.