GRC: Governance, Risk, and Compliance

GRC is an acronym formed by Governance, Risk, and Compliance, and despite being short, it is a cornerstone for companies to carry out their operations following regulatory procedures.

As a fundamental basis for organizations, it encompasses practices, policies, and procedures to ensure compliance, mitigate risk, and ensure all levels of the company operate ethically.

It is undeniable how essential it is in the current, very challenging, business reality.

GRC improves risk visibility and understanding, aligns efforts with business priorities, and ensures access to and optimization of information for quick and assertive decision-making.

In this sense, technology comes as an innovative solution capable of facilitating implementation and assisting in addressing market demands, swings, and dynamics. By combining the two strategies, you simplify and optmize process execution.

Now let’s understand what GRC is, its importance, and how, when combined with the right technologies, it strengthens companies to face challenges with precision and integration.

What is GRC?

Governance, Risk, and Compliance, GRC, is a system used to unify and align your approach to risk management and regulatory compliance.

Considering this practice allows companies to improve their performance by aligning activities with business goals. This, while managing risks and meeting applicable regulations.

In a didactic way, GRC is “an integrated set of capabilities that enables the organization to reliably achieve objectives, address uncertainties, and act with integrity.”

GRC strategies consist of:

• Governance: refers to the management of processes, structures, and policies to ensure that the organization’s activities are aligned in support of and promotion of the organization’s goals and objectives. Governance involves how directors and other executives gather data, make decisions, and communicate with other stakeholders.
• Risk: involves identifying, assessing, and controlling threats and risks to the organization. There is a vast array of risks, internal and external, faced by companies. Their management depends on assessments, internal auditing, and identification of critical or uncertain areas.
• Compliance: aims to ensure that activities operate in alignment with laws and regulations. These rules refer to government laws, such as LGPD and sustainability. And also to internal policies and procedures established internally.

In general, GRC encourages companies to centralize their data and information, ensuring that inconsistencies are resolved without affecting processes.

What are the risk types?

In a way, GRC is directly or indirectly related to the possible risks that the company may face.

If changes in processes can bring risks, keeping them without improvement or innovation is also a delicate matter.

As we mentioned, there is a multitude of possible threats faced daily by companies. Some types of risks can be pointed out as:

• Strategic: all those that affect business strategies;
• Operational: those that can interrupt, alter, or affect operations and processes;
• Technological: involves all connected components, including failures in applications, databases, cyberattacks, or infrastructure;
• Data: data theft or corruption, and any risk involving the leakage of confidential information.

In addition, companies can suffer financial losses due to lack of protection and reliability. And, this does not involve only internal policies. It is necessary to ensure that all partners, customers, and suppliers have good practices to not affect the organization’s reputation.

There is also compliance risk, which occurs specifically when non-compliance affects compliance with laws and regulations.

Does my company need GRC?

Companies of all sizes and sectors that wish to maintain sustainable growth in the current scenario, need to implement GRC.

Efficient GRC can provide a high level of transparency, accountability, and performance. And, it enables easy adaptation to regulations and their constant changes.

When well implemented, it ensures a broad and holistic view of the entire company. In addition to sharing information to define policies for compliance with regulations.

As benefits, GRC implementation provides:

• Data-driven decision-making;
• Operations responsible to ethical values;
• Improvement in all security aspects, especially cybersecurity;
• Cost reduction and duplication of activities;
• Quick and easy access to information;
• Transparent and assertive communication;
• Greater adaptation to market changes or new regulations;
• Competitive advantage by having a risk containment plan.

GRC as a strategy requires the company to standardize its processes so that activities are always carried out in the same and best way. This practice allows activities to be automated, as well as repetitive and redundant activities to be eliminated.

Using technology for governance, risk, and compliance management

When your GRC is well structured and organized, it drives the organization’s growth. And, having an Integrated Management Platform further enhances the success of the enterprise.

Technology is a kind of support arm, and it needs to be integrated with other tools and processes that make up the organization’s structure. So that all standards and practices become part of the business culture.

In addition, it should not have a complex structure. But, it should enable the centralization of information, reducing the risk of duplication or rework.

Centralized data is easily accessed, including remotely, ensuring constant compliance monitoring.

As an Integrated Management Platform, Fusion is capable of managing policies, assessing risks, controlling access to information, and ensuring traceability for audits.

As it is integrated with the company’s other solutions, it makes it possible for updates to regulatory changes to occur quickly and practically.

Regarding security specifically, Fusion allows granting or denying access to information.

In addition, the solution has a specific module for Risk Management, enabling the identification and classification of each threat.

In the tool itself, it is possible to create an action plan to contain or deal with each item seen as a threat to the company.

Focusing on Process, Document, and Indicator Management, Neomind’s solution favors and streamlines internal audits, comparing actual performance to GRC objectives.

Manage your risks, ensure compliance, and improve your governance. Don’t suffer from changes in regulations and the market, try Fusion Platform and maximize the success and growth of your business.