Finding Issues and Conflicts Before the Regulators Do; A GRC Approach

GRC systems can provide businesses operating in heavily regulated industries a platform to unify risk and compliance processes. Unifying both risk and compliance under one platform is helpful for businesses. It increases the efficiency of both risk and compliance teams by eliminating redundant processes. Management gets enhanced visibility into risk and compliance activities and can monitor both risk and compliance levels under one platform. These monitoring abilities also allow businesses to assess their risk and compliance process efficiency by tracking performance related metrics. In short, GRC systems simplify risk and compliance work while lowering costs.

The only thing worse than finding a problem within your organization is a regulatory body finding a problem that you didn’t even know about. If an issue is found by a member of your organization, it is easy to fix things before too much damage is caused. By the time an external authority finds a problem, the damage has already been done. There will be repercussions – from monetary fines to reputational losses. This is where GRC systems come in; taking the GRC approach allows your organization to locate compliance conflicts and issues before the regulators do.

Why GRC systems are a necessity

There is a very simple reason GRC systems are a necessity to achieve this goal; managing compliance, risk, and regulatory change manually is why the conflicts and issues weren’t discovered. Small to mid-sized organizations are often frustrated by the complexity and the demanding nature of compliance. Compliance feels like a trap; a part of the business so complicated that it is hard to keep track of everything, yet so crucial that one cannot afford to not track everything.

If you feel like you are missing a piece in solving the compliance puzzle, it’s because you are, and that piece is a GRC approach. GRC systems untangle compliance and turn it into something that can be viewed, monitored, and managed. If you want to see how much of a difference GRC systems can make, simply look at the difference made by technology in other similar scenarios. Think about how much of a difference electronic databases made for storing information; go back a few decades and all the information was on papers in filing cabinets. ‘Data’ was not a resource that could be used by the organization, because no data was being generated, as the information was not present in a form that could be easily spliced and calculated.

Now, we know what most people think at this point – our compliance and risk departments are already using servers and databases to store documents. The problem is that we have simply substituted the filing cabinets with servers and papers with electronic documents. While the information is being stored digitally, it is spread out in many different files and spreadsheets across many different servers and email inboxes. There is no data to be used – all the data needs to be manually compiled by a compliance or risk manager from several different spreadsheets and documents.

Upgrading to a GRC framework

The GRC framework completely changes this scenario. Every piece of information is now stored in the right place. Every piece of information is also now data; since you are using a GRC system instead of just an off-the-shelf software for creating documents and spreadsheets, the GRC system understands the information it contains. It generates data, which can be viewed with a single click, and reports can be created automatically because the GRC framework is intelligent enough to parse documents.

Most importantly, it gives senior management the ability to monitor and track compliance and risk in a way that was simply not possible before the GRC framework. Since reporting is automated, the board of directors and other senior managers can get the information that they want with just a few clicks. Want to know how many compliance issues are open before an audit is expected? No need to ask anyone – simply view the open issues in the GRC system. Want to know how much risk the business is facing and what is causing the rise in risk? Again, there is no need to ask anyone, the information is right at the fingertips of all authorized users.

Finding issues and conflicts is simplified and often automated in GRC frameworks. GRC systems integrate compliance, risk, and governance. Every relationship between the audits, regulations, policies, and documents is mapped within the system. Thus, when there is a conflict it can be automatically detected by the GRC system which will then automatically notify the assigned stakeholders. Thus, in the GRC framework your organization is the first party to find out about the issue and take steps to solve it before it ever reaches any regulatory body.
If you want to see what a GRC system can do for your organization, get in touch with us and we will arrange a live demo of Predict360 for you. Want to explore Predict360 yourself and see how it will benefit your compliance workflow? Start your 30-day free trial.

About the company

360factors, Inc. (Austin, TX) helps companies improve business performance by reducing risk and ensuring compliance. Predict360, its flagship software product, vertically integrates regulations and requirements, policies and procedures management, risks and controls, audit management and inspections, and on-line training and qualifications, in a single cloud-based platform based on artificial intelligence.

Remain up-to-date on industry news/updates through our Twitter & Linkedin profiles.