Is it challenging for you to develop or change the Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) strategy of your business? You are not alone. According to a global risk management report, 57% of senior executives ranked risk and compliance as one of the two categories they find themselves least prepared to address. Also, around 69% of executives confessed that their current GRC policies and processes may not likely meet future requirements.
Governance, risk management, and compliance is a challenging area to manage irrespective of your industry. Let us help you understand more about GRC, the common challenges, and most importantly some ways to overcome them.
GRC explained
GRC is the term used to define an organisation’s approach to managing risks, compliance with rules, regulations, and guidelines, and internal corporate and policy management. With changing times and market scenario, organisations find it daunting and at times overwhelming to keep up with the changing regulatory requirements. Failing to comply with these rules and regulations can result in hefty fines. GRC management will help to diminish these risks and penalties.
The 5 Common GRC Challenges for businesses
Some of the most common GRC challenges include:
1. Identifying key roles in the GRC process for a unified vision
This is often the first step towards building a robust GRC framework and many organisations find it difficult. Every business unit in an organisation functions in silos with its own set of data, processes, stakeholders, technology, and compliance requirements. Identifying and including key roles from all these units can be troublesome if they do not hold to a unified vision of the GRC strategy. The larger the organisation, the more challenging it is to manage these silos.
2. Lack of comprehensive GRC framework
A flexible and comprehensive GRC framework is the prerequisite of every successful business. Regulations evolve along with rising business opportunities and the organisations who invest in building a comprehensive GRC framework can gain a competitive advantage over others. The biggest challenge here is to integrate the goals and requirements of all business departments. Once that is achieved, it is easier to align business processes and goals. The comprehensive GRC framework must also include a strategy to bring all the meaningful data from business units together and prioritise critical tasks and audits.
3. Meeting mercurial government and regulatory requirements
According to a 2017 survey, a combined average of approx. 200 regulatory updates were made by more than 900 regulatory bodies every day. That is a huge number to keep up with for businesses of all sizes. Various industries might observe a change in regulations almost every day. Looming compliance deadlines often prove overwhelming for organisations that are also struggling to catch up with the new changes. A reliable and consistent method of monitoring the regulatory changes can help businesses stay up to date.
4. Persistent and obsolete manual processes
Some of the business processes that support business operations might still be manual and obsolete in many organisations. Methods to gather information for GRC documentation might still use an endless array of emails, spreadsheets, phone calls, and other inefficient modes. With the increased amount of data to be handled and the changing regulatory requirements, these old methods also amplify the risks of decline in employee accountability and follow-through, visibility of GRC management, and jeopardise data integrity. A comprehensive GRC tool can help make sense of data collected from business processes, keep it safe, and promote informed decision making.
5. The disparity between organisational culture and GRC
Every change to governance must begin with top management and be followed throughout the organisation. This is known as the top-to-bottom approach to GRC management. A GRC strategy built efficiently is of no use unless it is implemented organisation-wide with the same efficiency. Misalignments between these two processes can further lead to a disparity between GRC strategy and the culture of an organisation. Businesses must ensure that the new GRC strategy is implemented effectively throughout all levels of the organisation.
How can businesses overcome these challenges?
However daunting these GRC challenges may seem, there are ways businesses can overcome them. Some of these ways include:
Proactively monitoring critical controls
Critical controls are measures to ensure compliance with government and industry regulations. One of the best ways to avoid strategic and operational risks is to monitor critical controls proactively. Continuous tracking of these controls provides important insights on where they are violated and the ways to overcome those risks in future. It leads to better risk management and aligning business processes with GRC strategy.
Determining the organisational requirements
Businesses often fail to devise an effective GRC strategy because they fail to understand their organisational requirements. That is also a leading cause for misalignments between organisational culture and GRC strategy. If everything is to be kept in line, it is important to know your organisational requirements first. There is no universal GRC strategy for all businesses in an industry. It must be designed, developed, and implemented according to varying requirements.
Adopting centralised data management
Manually searching for a piece of information or changed data in spreadsheets, documents, email trails, etc. can be challenging. An integrated approach to managing GRC data can be provided by centralised data management. A central repository of data helps ensure enhanced data availability, integrity, and security. Implementing authorised access controls is much easier with a centralised data repository.
Switching to automated GRC tools
GRC software can help you gather and study GRC records, determine inefficiencies and requirements, support organisation-wide GRC learning and implementation, collect feedback, report GRC incidents, etc. All these GRC related tasks are necessary to efficiently implement your GRC strategy and keep it up to date. Advanced GRC software also helps you with robust GRC reporting which is critical for improved decision making and risk and compliance management.
How can Sentrient GRC tools help your business?
Sentrient’s governance, risk management, and compliance software is a cloud-based tool to help manage all legal and regulatory requirements within your organisation. It is powered with features such as online GRC:
- Training and Course Builder
- Surveys
- Policies and Policy Builder
- Record Management
- Incident Management
- Risk Management
All these features allow key people and employees in your organisation to manage and follow the GRC strategy at every stage. Our software is easy to implement, use, and scale-up in future. It also makes GRC reporting simpler with the help of advanced technology. With Sentrient, comprehensive GRC reporting is right at your fingertips.
Conclusion:
Building and implementing a robust governance, risk management, and compliance strategy are some of the core management tasks for every business. If you are looking for the best way to redefine your GRC management, contact us. Sentrient can help you overcome challenges and provide the right features to manage risks and compliance. Call us today for more information!
This blog post was originally published here.
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