“GRC” is the umbrella term covering an organization’s approach across three areas: Governance, risk management, and compliance. GRC is officially defined as an “integrated capability to reliably achieve objectives, while addressing uncertainty, and act with integrity.”
Every organization has some direction and method for GRC. For years, businesses have followed old-school GRC implementations using traditional methodologies such as spreadsheets and in-house tools. Today, all modern enterprises must let go of traditional GRC practices and modernize their approach. But how do you get there?
To ensure an effective GRC initiative, it is important to pick the right implementation partner and an ideal GRC solution for your company’s challenges. GRC solutions streamline and automate the documentation and reporting of corporate GRC tasks and align them with business objectives. An effective GRC solution will significantly lower costs by acting as a single source of truth and eliminating errors, gaps, and confusion in managing compliances.
Consider these points while evaluating GRC solutions:
- Features: Solution should address all your desired features. Verify your requirements through demonstrations and proof of concepts.
- Implementation: Solution implementation should be quick, easy, and require minimal time and effort from your team.
- Ease of use: Solution interface should be user-friendly and have an intuitive and modern interface that your user base will accept.
- Configuration: Solution should allow administrators to make updates from interface, rather than involving vendor’s team to make changes.
- Dashboards and Reports: Solution should provide clear visibility of organization’s risk and compliance posture along with user/role-level views.
- Professional Services: Solution should have a complementing professional services team that is experienced and led by industry experts.
Choosing a GRC software is an important decision. Not only is governance, risk management, and compliance a significant investment in time and resources, but the system you choose will also have an enormous impact on the daily workload of your risk and compliance teams.
When used effectively, GRC software can help Chief Information Security Officers, Chief Security Officers, and Directors of Compliance move past spreadsheets to mature their risk management and compliance programs.
GRC Product Statistics and Information
- According to Gartner, the market for GRC solutions is projected to grow at a 13.4 percent compound annual growth rate, meaning it will reach $7.3 billion by 2020.
- According to GRC 20/20, there are 843 technology solution providers that offer GRC-related solutions.
- A recent survey by GRC 20/20 identified the main criteria GRC professionals look for when purchasing GRC solutions:
- The following list from GRC 20/20 outlines several key considerations for evaluating GRC platforms:
- Client References: Be sure to check client references. This doesn’t just involve talking to the primary client, but also talking to someone on that client’s team who uses the solution every day.
- Market Presence: Does the solution provider have enough momentum or differentiating technology to prove its permanence in the market?
- GRC Strategy: Ensure that the solution provider shares your vision for your company and understands your future direction. Staying on the same page is crucial for success.
- Business Value: Your solution should demonstrate a clear return of value to your business in efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.
- RFP Hype: Test drive the solution to get a better understanding of it. Don’t be afraid to ask direct questions about the features—especially to find out whether features are natively in the solution or if they have to be built out.
- Solution Reach: The solution must be able to meet your industry and geographic needs in order to support your operations, languages, and content.
- 24% of CEOs state that their biggest impediment to business growth is the fear and unknown of mounting cyber risk. (Gartner)
- Over 50% of Fortune 500 companies will use an IRM solution by 2021 to improve decision-making and propel business. (Gartner)
- 69% of organizations are not confident that their current GRC activities will be enough to meet their future needs. (Gartner)
- 75% of Fortune 500 companies will treat Vendor Risk Management as a board-level issue by 2020. (Gartner)
- According to GRC 20/20, it’s important take these considerations into account when evaluating a potential GRC solution:
- Cost: How much does it cost to acquire, implement, and maintain the solution?
- Ease of Use: Does the solution increase your efficiency with its ease of use and the intuitiveness of the platform?
- Security: What is the security architecture of the platform? How does the provider resolve the platform’s security issues?
- Information Architecture: Is the solution easily configurable and adaptable to your environment? Or is it expensive when it comes to customization, programming, and adaptability?
- Integration: Does the solution allow for the right integration points with other analytic, control, and Enterprise GRC solutions?
- Agility: Does the solution meet both your current needs and long-term needs? Consider your strategy over the next three to five years. Is the solution still a good fit?
Finding a GRC solution that meets all your needs and requirements can be a difficult process—so don’t be afraid to ask for help. To learn more about a comprehensive GRC solution that will revolutionize your company’s processes, set up a free demo with me.
