Governance risk and compliance can help align business activities to strategic goals, manage risks efficiently, and stay ahead of compliance. It is the way organisations manage the three of the most important areas to achieve their objectives. Organisations spend considerable time and capital devising and enhancing their approach to GRC. To make things simpler, we have listed some of the common factors that must be regarded for better planning. Let us have a look at some of the top tips to improve your GRC strategy and use better tools such as GRC software.

5 Keys to Effective Governance Risk and Compliance Management

First things first, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for creating and implementing a GRC strategy for businesses. The effectiveness of the strategy varies as per the type of industry your business belongs to, the products and/or services you provide, and so on. But there are a few common factors every organisation can benefit from.

1. Conduct research

Answering questions for who and what can be the foundation for building an effective strategy. Identify the key stakeholders who will help formulate the GRC strategy for your business and what the strategy must include. This information can get you further towards defining the key objectives of implementing the strategy. Also, articulate information such as the criteria for success of the strategy, roles and responsibilities within the organisation, and critical milestones for success along the process.

When looking for the right automation solution for GRC requirements, implement the above knowledge and make an informed decision to minimise expenditure and workload. Knowing and clearly defining your GRC expectations can be the first step towards better management.

2. Adopt an iterative approach

Another crucial key is to realise that the initial strategy might not be the final effective solution that best suits your requirements. GRC is continuously evolving, and getting the best strategy in one go might not be realistic. Be prepared for revisions and plan out what steps to follow in such a case. The iterative approach creates a continuous improvement loop, encourages feedback from key stakeholders and users of the GRC program and helps keep the business functioning whilst optimising your approach…

3. Collaborate

Everyone in your organisation can contribute to your GRC strategy, albeit those who generally contribute and collaborate the most through the process are top management, chief financial officers, risk managers, compliance officers, WHS officers, and HR managers. All of these GRC-related roles and the teams they support can provide important input for developing and implementing the best GRC strategy. Such collaboration from roles in the GRC project team is vital to the ongoing success of your GRC strategy.

4. Maintain open communication

Once the GRC strategy is developed for your organisation, it is important to explain the purpose behind implementing it. Employees might start to misunderstand the nature of GRC without clear communication and reliable governance, risk and compliance information. Open and continuous communication helps avoid such problems and lets them know that the GRC strategy is a positive step. Doing so also allows colleagues to comfortably discuss their confusions and doubts without creating further problems.

5. Innovate

Many businesses only focus on cutting costs and hence forget to provide the right resources required to their employees. Innovations such as GRC software can help reduce costs while providing the required support to employees. It is an easy and effective way to ensure everyone has the right resources and to maximise output.

What is a GRC Software?

GRC software is a technological innovation that helps businesses automate governance risk and compliance management tasks. It allows you to attain your regulatory requirements for training, GRC policies, incident management, records management, and surveys. Even the simplest procedure in a business requires governance, risk, and compliance management and GRC software help record information, report and resolve GRC incidents, and ensure compliance.

How can Sentrient help you with GRC requirements?

Sentrient provides carefully crafted GRC software that provides powerful features and workflows for businesses of all sizes and all industries. It is simple to use and the software is easy to implement. Sentrient can help your business stay on top of your governance, risk, and compliance regime. It helps save numerous hours and high costs otherwise spent on performing these tasks. The important features of Sentrient are as follows:

1. Online GRC Training and Course Builder

Training is an integral part of the employee development lifecycle and helps your employees learn more about governance, risk, and compliance. Our software comes with a suite of legally endorsed online GRC courses to help manage your GRC training requirements. It also lets you build new GRC training courses for your employees to better identify with your organisation’s take on GRC.

2. Online GRC Policies and Policy Builder

Once the GRC strategy is defined, it must be implemented using workplace policies. Online GRC policies by Sentrient empower your organisation with pre-defined GRC policy templates and policy builders that can be adjusted as per your strategic requirements and provided to your employees online. They can be assigned to newly hired or onboarding employees as they start and to existing employees when they are updated.

3. Online GRC Records Management

One of the common concerns when managing governance, risk, and compliance is to maintain the bulky GRC records carefully. It is a time-consuming process that may take up more resources and increase the risks of error when done manually. Our GRC system allows you to easily maintain all compliance records such as qualifications, memberships, licences, checks, and more, saving time and effort.

4. Online GRC Incident Reporting

Businesses must record and report all governance, risk, and compliance incidents occurring within their organisations. Sentrient GRC software comes with an inbuilt GRC incident reporting feature that can help record, report, and resolve GRC incidents as required. It also supports recording history and uploads files to make the incident reporting and resolving processes easier.

5. Online GRC Risk Management

Our robust software workflows also allow businesses to define, record and manage all their GRC risks. You can specify details such as risks, risk owners, categories, severity, etc. You can also record risk values and show risk mitigation information here. It helps enhance the knowledge of your employees to better manage occurrences of related risks in future.

6. Online GRC Surveys

Online GRC surveys are important to improve your take on the GRC strategies. With our system, you can create your own GRC surveys, assign them to your workforce, and gather feedback. You can do so by including various open and close-ended questions to make the survey more engaging.

The takeaway:

The quality and integrity of your governance, risk, and compliance framework can make all the difference in the success and growth of your organisation. Ensure you implement the right tools to take care of this area of your business by selecting Sentrient. We are here to take the pain out of the ordeal of creating and implementing an effective GRC strategy. Feel free to give us a call to learn more about how Sentrient can help your business.