Effective governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) delivers the ability to meet requirements, achieve human and financial efficiency, and meet the demands of a dynamic business environment that requires agility. It eliminates silos of risk and compliance that emerge from parts of the organization that have historically worked independently of each other. The goal is to provide a process, technology, and information architecture that can be used for a range of GRC purposes throughout the organization. To make the solution effective, however, different business roles must share information and work in harmony. Harmony is a vital GRC concept: Harmony means various risk and compliance roles cooperate, collaborate, and share, to create a big picture of GRC and make sure the organization is properly governed.
When it comes down to it, the "GRC" acronym is not important. There are many GRC initiatives that do not use the term. The goal is the same — to drive efficiency, effectiveness and agility across risk and compliance processes to support a dynamic and extended business environment. GRC is about process improvement, technology automation, collaboration, and sharing of information.
Software vendors often confuse organizations about what GRC is, and in an effort to land a bigger deal, ignore the real needs of the business. GRC is about solving real, existing business problems while enabling a collaborative approach to address areas of future interest. GRC initiatives are often impaired by the legion of vendors marketing their solutions and labeling them GRC. Many vendor searches struggle with:
