Common Pitfalls of GRC Technology Implementation
- November 4, 2021
- Quantivate
“Rome wasn’t built in a day.” This old adage rings as true for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) management as it does in any other scenario. An effective, efficient, and agile GRC program will not be built overnight; it’s a significant undertaking that requires buy-in and collaboration across your entire organization.
Businesses can’t expect to effectively manage GRC initiatives in isolation using manual processes and disjointed, department-level strategies. Your organization’s risk landscape is interconnected and constantly evolving. Identifying, managing, and monitoring risk is extremely difficult without an integrated information architecture that provides enterprise-wide visibility of your risk and compliance data and activities.
Read more | Unsiloing Your Data for Better GRC Management >
GRC Technology Implementation Benefits and Challenges
Implementing a robust and integrated GRC solution that rolls up risk and compliance information into one platform equips stakeholders to make smarter decisions. Using tools and reporting that share data across GRC disciplines, both executive leadership and the organization’s risk and compliance functions can align GRC management with business goals.
Successfully managing regulatory change, growing risks, and operational resilience requires awareness of your current GRC activities and where improvements are needed. But when considering a GRC management platform, many organizations find it challenging to choose and implement a suitable solution.
Companies that approach GRC management as a success enabler, investing in digital transformation and program automation, stand to gain significant short- and long-term benefits. However, a failed GRC technology implementation — perhaps due to the lack of an underlying strategy or realizing that the solution doesn’t fit your needs — can leave your organization back at square one.
Make sure your institution doesn’t waste time and resources on an ill-considered implementation by avoiding some of the most common pitfalls:
6 GRC Technology Implementation Mistakes to Avoid
- Lack of defined requirements
- Failure to understand implementation and maintenance costs
- Poor planning for or execution of implementation and configuration work
- Customizing the solution to an extent that makes changes or upgrades difficult and costly
- Lack of preparedness to properly implement and operate the technology architecture
- Failure to manage your organization’s relationship with the vendor
This list may not seem surprising or new, but these issues have burdened organizations of all sizes for decades and continue to prove challenging. Technology evaluation, selection, and implementation can be difficult, and it takes time and commitment to move up the GRC maturity curve and develop a well-integrated, coordinated, and optimized GRC program.
Organizations that lay the foundation of a strong culture, policies, processes, and controls will make their technology investment more effective. Rather than being a magic bullet for successful GRC management, technology solutions help firms build on and mature their existing capabilities to consolidate data, streamline and automate processes, and align GRC activities to business strategy and objectives.