How Does Governance Risk & Compliance Software Help Your Business?

Here’s a question we get asked a lot: how does governance risk and compliance software help your business?

Firstly, what is governance risk and compliance (GRC) software?

Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software refers to a strategy for managing an organization’s overall governance, enterprise risk management and compliance with various regulators. It outlines regulatory compliance standards that are relevant to an organization and ensures the business is compliant with the standards. There are key components to a GRC framework, including internal and external audits, compliance research, security procedures and controls, and compliance reporting.

GRC software helps businesses manage IT and security risks, reduce costs and meet the appropriate requirements, including governance, risk management and compliance processes.

Let’s break down the GRC into its basic parts.

Governance

Governance is when corporate activities are aligned to support business goals through rules, policies and processes dictated by a business. Governance includes ethics, resource management, accountability and management control over employees. This management includes directing and influencing what happens at all levels of a business, ensuring customer needs are met while also concerning themselves with corporate goals.

When governance is effective, employees feel empowered to do their best and the behavior of the company improves. Resources are also controlled and well-coordinated, making the business flow better.

Governance is also essential because it balances the interests of stakeholders. These stakeholders may include top management, employees, suppliers and investors. It’s important to note not every stakeholder will have similar interests, in fact, they will most likely have conflicting interests. This is why governance is key to ensuring a positive work environment that suits everyone.

Most importantly, governance provides accountability for conduct and results, ensuring that appropriate people are being held responsible for their actions. Conduct is managed through ethical business practices, and should be considered. Good governance ensures employees are being evaluated based on their results and benefits to the company rather than previous responsibilities.

Risk Management

Risk management is self explanatory, it is the process of identifying risks to an organization. Risk management includes identifying, assessing and controlling risks, including financial, legal, strategic and security risks to a business. In order to reduce risk, businesses need certain resources to minimize, monitor and control the negative impacts while maximizing positive outcomes for the company.

Enterprise risk management has the goal of achieving corporate objectives while lowering risk profile and securing value. An important part of the risk management is prioritizing stakeholder expectations and releasing reliable information to stakeholders. Another type of risk management is cybersecurity threats and risks. For example, software vulnerabilities and poor employee passwords.

GRC software should assess the performance and effectiveness of your system, identify technological failures that could impact the core business, and potential failure of networks and computer resources.

A risk assessment program must be legal, and have other important features such as being contractual, internal, social and ethical. They also must monitor new technology regulations. Risk management is essential and resources should be spent to protect the business from uncertainty, unknown costs and increase the likelihood of business success.

Compliance

Compliance is adhering to rules and regulations set out by the government or industries your company is involved in. They adhere to policies, standards and laws set out by these bodies. Failing to do so can cost your business money in fines, penalties, lawsuits or even poor performance or boycotting from customers.

Regulatory compliance is about your company’s involvement in a sector, and adhering to external laws, regulations and industry standards. Individual companies can also have compliance rules, regulations and internal controls that can affect their employees. When businesses have their own internal compliance rules, they should also be integrated with external laws. For example, ensuring that your own employees are following general laws including safety and sexual harassment laws. Compliance programs should train employees based on these policies.

A guidance process should be developed to make it easier for employees to know that they are being compliant with external and internal policies and laws.

GRC Tools

There are many tools offered by GRC systems. There are basic features, such as document management, workflow management and audit management.

However, when picking GRC software you should consider the extra features that can further help your business run smoothly.

IntelligenceBank offers a great GRC platform with features that will help you map and control access to compliance requirements, and improve risk assessment and mitigation. Their governance risk & compliance software features include:

• Risk and compliance registers: which can be available from their selection, or you can make your own. IntelligenceBank’s selection of registers include Health and Safety, Conflict of Interest, Audit, Policies, Contracts, Incidents and more. Get notified by email when a new action or compliance has been added.
• Surveys: Instant feedback about internal controls. They can be completely customized, and exported at any time to get a complete analysis.
• Calendars and approvals: View all key dates in calendar view, including each risk and compliance project with meetings. Assign tasks to specific items and see it in the overview.
• Customize your dashboard: Including registers, outstanding actions and workflow approvals. Create custom reports and save them for reporting requirements easily.
• Document management search: You can easily link your documents in a folder, meaning nothing gets lost. Searching for important files is more effective through lightning fast search.

GRC software enable your business to feel confident in meeting Government, Risk management and Compliance requirements. Choosing the correct GRC software for your business is the easiest way to ensure that you are being compliant with internal and external regulations.