Today's organizations face a myriad of challenges due to the changing complexity of the business environment in terms of regulation, people, technology and processes. Accordingly, manual workflows are no longer enough to ensure progress, increasing the need for automation.
GRC - governance, risk, and compliance - is one of the most crucial components an organization can implement to achieve its strategic goals and meet stakeholder needs. An effective GRC platform can help realize an organization's automation needs.
What is GRC?
GRC is complex and difficult to reduce to a single concept. It is about setting goals, implementing strategies, making the correct decisions (governance), analyzing contingencies (risk), and maintaining business integrity (compliance).
Broadly speaking, GRC is a well-coordinated and integrated collection of all the capabilities needed to support optimal performance at all levels of the organization - including:
- Internal auditing tasks
- Compliance-related tasks
- Risk assessment - and management
- Legal, finance, IT and HR
GRC is not only relevant towards the internal work of employees, management and the board, but is also essential for collaborators, suppliers and external stakeholders.
The Components of GRC
GRC is composed of three elements:
- Governance: Management and monitoring of organizational activities
- Risk: Risk assessment - and management
- Compliance: Complying with relevant standards and legislation
In practice, GRC tools allow users to manage and comply with legal requirements. The systems also allow for secure data sharing between business, security, and compliance departments across the organization.
Why is GRC Important to Organizations?
In a world with increasingly complex challenges regarding regulations, humans, technology, and processes, correct data processing is a growing necessity.
GRC tools can facilitate this and also aid in detecting and preventing risks and inefficiencies. Compliance is particularly exposed to new regulations. In this regard, effective software can ensure that the organization remains up-to-date with the newest laws, regulations, and standards.
However, it is important to remember that managing GRC shouldn’t be siloed between departments. One key to success in this domain is a holistic approach with a broad view of GRC work across departments.
What are the Benefits of a Good GRC Platform?
Investing in a good GRC platform has many benefits in supporting the business goals of an organization - including:
- Better decision making
- Optimal IT investments
- Elimination of silos
- Reduced fragmentation between departments
A successful GRC program requires a collective effort from the C-level to the bottom of the organization. Streamlined organization-wide GRC, timely and accurate information sharing, and precise targets and controls—nail these and watch costs plummet, redundancy vanish, and operational hiccups ease.
