Governance, risk management, and compliance are terms that refer to various strategies used by corporations. It involves managing the company’s risk and ensuring that it complies with the set rules and regulations for its industry. GRC software can help automate some of these tasks to make sure that everyone in the organization is doing what is right. It can align the precision of the IT department with an organization’s business objectives while, at the same time making sure everyone is adhering to all compliance requirements. A well-structured GRC strategy offers a company many benefits such as: improved decision making, IT investments, reduced fragmentation in departments and divisions, and elimination of silos.

GRC software is designed to rationalize governance, risk and compliance processes in an organization. It takes these critical management tasks out of manual emails and spreadsheets and puts them into secure and uniformed systems. Failing to have an online system that manages risk and compliance matters is a huge risk in itself. Spreadsheets are easily misplaced, deleted or lost during staff turnovers. GRC is an effective tool for running a business effectively; it allows the management to make informed decisions that are based on calculated risks. Below are some of the benefits associated with implementing GRC strategies.

They enhance business stability

Having a strong GRC policy is a companywide endeavor. Having a culture that promotes doing the right thing and following all rules or guidelines is often easier said than done. Working with GRC software allows the management team the ability to monitor certain procedures and limit them to certain actions.

It enables optimization of business activities

One purpose of GRC strategies is to eliminate activities that are tedious or time-consuming to the company. It allows the business to streamline tasks that add value by reducing the time needed to implement them and minimize undesirable variations. These strategies help the business put in place preventative controls by use of automated restrictions and procedures. By putting in place these strategies, a business is able to increase the efficiency of its day to day operations.

It boosts transparency in an organization

GRC systems allow you as a manager or business owner to clearly view the processes of the enterprise. It allows managers and owners to have control and access to necessary content that enables them to understand the business better. This is instrumental in assessing challenges and applicable risks of the enterprise.

It helps reduce costs of operations

By lowering the costs of operations, a business is able to enjoy higher profits. GRC helps to reduce the overall cost of maintaining duplicated controls, issues, actions, tests and reporting across various disciplines.

It helps create consistency in the way an organization works

Improved alignment of a company’s objectives, visions, and values is critical in enhancing its confidence and decision-making abilities.

How is a GRC Platform Implemented?

Implementing an online compliance and risk management system may seem overwhelming to many business owners. The implementation process starts by studying your business structure. This helps in designing the settings and structure of your portal, training your employees and data migration.

This does not need to be a complicated thing. Risk managers are required to set up a structure of the registers, document library, surveys, alerts, task management, dashboards, custom reports, and workflows.

Benefits of Using GRC Software

  • It integrates policy management, risk management, IT governance, audit management, and incident management.
  • It helps to create, monitor measure and manage IT governance programs. This is done based on top control frameworks in the business field.
  • It enables the business to implement an automated and workflow-based management approach in all departments of an organization.
  • It creates a systematic mechanism for the management of IT surveys, self-assessments, certifications and audits. The software does all these in a reliable, consistent and practical manner.
  • It provides the business with a flexible and integrated framework for analyzing and documenting IT risks, defining controls, developing mitigation plans and managing current risk assessments.

As businesses continue to rely heavily on Information Technology, the business environment continues to become more complex. This exposes a business to a variety of threats, risks, and vulnerabilities that impact the business directly. By putting in place GRC systems, owners and managers of businesses can manage risks and effectively re mediate regulatory gaps.