Market Insight

What is GRC?

Governance, Risk and Compliance is the term coined by analysts such as Gartner and Forrester to describe the software solutions that enable organisations to use automated workflow processes to manage the documentation, actions and activities associated with all areas of GRC.

In today’s complex, highly regulated world, organisations cannot escape the need to effectively manage GRC across the organisation.

In most cases, this starts with the realisation that manual systems, spreadsheets and bespoke databases do not insure compliance to regulations and regulatory bodies and leads to the awareness that these systems seriously threaten the integrity of the organisation and hold back its ability to see continuous business improvement.

GRC software encompasses 4 key areas. These are:

• Policy Management
• Risk Management
• Audit Management
• Compliance Management

What are the Main Challenges to GRC Adoption?

In order for businesses to truly benefit from GRC they must overcome a number of obstacles, the three C’s:

• Culture: The greatest barrier to adoption is the reluctance to give up current solutions. Businesses should work with the vendor to come up with role-based workflows and configurations so that existing processes are enforced or improved and to determine what information needs to be imported or removed
• Communication: Companies must ensure that they communicate the benefits at the operational level to those who will be using the new solution, for example more effective collaboration across the enterprise. Ask your vendor about training so that users and administrators have the appropriate skills to be able to make the system work for them
• Content: The final C refers to concerns many organisations have around data migration. With current content often not well managed or formatted businesses may need to bring in external consultant to make sense of/improve processes