Governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is an umbrella term that denotes a framework encompassing the approaches, methodologies, and strategies used by organizations to manage GRC endeavors effectively.
Governance refers to how the administration manages the operations of the organization; risk refers to how the organization identifies, mitigates, and resolves risks that may arise out of operational considerations; and compliance refers to how the organization adheres to industry standards, rules, and regulations.
A GRC framework is necessary from three standpoints:
Governing the operations of an organization effectively is vital for survivability and sustainability. Effective governance:
Effective governance clearly establishes objectives for each organizational process. This provides clarity into what needs to be done to rein in haphazard processes and align them with organizational goals.
Whatever inefficiencies abound in an organization, by governing effectively, these can be identified easily and weeded out. Resource and capital waste are minimized with effective governance.
Optimal resource utilization is one of the core advantages of effective governance. The desired volume of output is achieved, and productivity is boosted with the minimal expenditure of resources. This increases the quality and quantity of the organizational output.
Risks abound in any endeavor. To remain viable, an organization should be capable of:
Identifying a risk before it becomes a real issue is vital. This will ensure that the organization is equipped to deal with risks as they arise by identifying, classifying, and analyzing their causes up front.
Whenever risks do manifest despite prior anticipation, there should be effective risk mitigation and management frameworks in place to handle them.
This applies to risks that have already manifested. The organization should take measures to minimize the damage caused by the manifested risk. It's essential to have measures in place to learn from the risks that have been dealt with. This will help ensure that the same mistake is not repeated twice.
Risk deterrence is crucial for optimized operations. Risk deterrence aims to eliminate risks even before they become a reality. A set of heuristics is put in place to monitor business processes for potential risks that could crop up. Once these are identified, measures are taken to defuse the flawed processes before they result in manifested risks. Deterrence is better than risk management and mitigation.
Compliance refers to how an organization adheres to industry standards, rules, and regulations. Compliance is necessary for an organization, both from an internal and external perspective.
Its internal processes, policies, and procedures for operations comply with industry standards.
Its guidelines for employee conduct adhere to industry regulations.
It adheres to the laws of the industries in the geographies where it functions.
It complies with global standards such as ISO standards, the GDPR, and the CCPA.
A systematic approach is essential to implementing a GRC framework in an organization.
Establish goals
Classify organizational processes
Create a basic GRC framework
Identify the technologies
Implement the GRC framework
Train stakeholders
Create a feedback loop
The fundamental step in a GRC endeavor is to establish clear goals for implementing it in your organization. In this phase, clearly identify and define your end objectives, key metrics, and timeline for when the GRC overhaul needs to be completed.
This step entails a thorough analysis of all the processes, procedures, and policies in your organization. In this phase, identify potential processes that need to be subject to the GRC framework.
In this phase, implement a scaffolding of the end GRC framework. This lays down a blueprint for the entire GRC endeavor.
There are a lot of technologies available on the market today that can be used for implementing a GRC framework. When choosing technologies with which to implement your GRC framework, consider various criteria, such as the:
In this phase, implement the GRC framework using the chosen technologies. Subject processes to monitoring and automation. Granularly analyze workflows. Conduct organizational audits and make assessments. Transform the GRC policy of your organization into a reality.
The organizational stakeholders need to be trained in the implemented GRC framework for them to function based on it. Familiarity with the organizational GRC framework is the end result of this phase.
In this phase, analyze the outcome of the GRC framework implementation. Use the learnings from this phase during future process optimizations. This will ensure constant improvement and progress.
There are several ways through which GRC frameworks can be implemented in organizations:
This is how GRC frameworks were first implemented in organizations. With assistance drawn from computer software such as spreadsheets, GRC frameworks were manually implemented in organizations using paper-based processes with some degree of automation.
This method had the following disadvantages:
These solutions are ready-made software. They ship with a preset feature set.
Organizations have GRC experts who have domain knowledge. However, these experts lack the technical expertise required to translate their knowledge into working software that can be leveraged to implement a GRC framework in their organization. Hiring external stakeholders to do the GRC framework implementation or using off-the-shelf software are not optimal, practical solutions.
There is an alternative: low-code platforms.
Low-code platforms facilitate business process automation, including GRC framework implementation, with little to no coding. On these platforms, people with little programming knowledge or technical expertise can translate their business requirements into functional applications.
GRC stakeholders can leverage the capabilities of low-code platforms easily because of the following features:
Instead of coding from the ground up, low-code platforms provide a what you see is what you get drag-and-drop interface to transform GRC framework requirements into reality. This enables GRC experts with little technical expertise to easily implement GRC frameworks in their organizations.
Repetitive GRC framework tasks like governance audits, risk evaluations and reporting, and compliance checks can be easily automated as workflows with low-code platforms, saving time and money. Eventually, this allows stakeholders to focus on more essential tasks.
GRC modules built on a low-code platform scale automatically with the varying userbase. You don't need to go back to recreating the software from scratch whenever there is a fluctuation in the userbase of the GRC modules.
Several low-code platforms offer the ability to deploy solutions on mobile platforms without separate development processes. This mobile-ready feature is a win-win for GRC stakeholders as personnel can utilize universal remote access to GRC solutions.
Low-code platforms provide prebuilt compliance templates. These templates save time and simplify the implementation of the compliance aspect of the GRC framework for GRC personnel.
Low-code platforms innately provide audit logs covering organizational process executions. Logs are vital from a GRC perspective through the granular insights they offer into process executions.
When used diligently, low-code platforms are a robust solution for GRC. GRC experts can quickly implement GRC frameworks in their organizations by harnessing low-code platforms due to their ease of use and short learning curve.
These platforms' advantages, such as deep customizability, the ability to integrate with third-party solutions, autoscaling, and holistic logging, are all pluses when it comes to implementing GRC frameworks. To summarize, implementing a GRC framework with a low-code platform is a veritable game-changer.
If you're looking for a low-code platform for your GRC framework requirements, evaluate ManageEngine AppCreator. The platform offers a free, 30-day trial.
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