Integrating GRC and Strategic Planning: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

With next year’s planning cycle looming ahead, risk and strategy are big buzz words this time of year, and for good reason.

Today’s business environment demands agility from organizations to be successful. It’s agility that allows organizations to respond effectively to turbulent market conditions and turn adversities into opportunities. But for most, this does not come easy. The problem is that most businesses still treat enterprise risk management and strategic planning as two separate activities. This siloed, fragmented approach makes them slow to respond which drives up costs and exposure to unexpected and potentially debilitating business risks.

Embracing an integrated approach comes with multiple benefits. Forward-thinking organizations that value a more integrated approach to managing correlated strategic planning activities and business risks enjoy a new level of confidence and transparency in terms of compliance, including these benefits:

• Operational excellence
• Sustainability
• Reduced costs/Increased margins
• Enhanced business performance and predictability
• Agility

A holistic governance, risk and compliance (GRC) initiative means deploying a single, unified set of integrated applications that go beyond compliance to proactively monitor, identify and manage risks. These applications should operate using a single, shared data repository providing greater visibility across the organization and automating manual tasks, breaking down silos and effectively simplifying processes to aggregate risks and  lower costs.

The Integrated GRC Strategic Imperative. Transforming fragmented functional department business activities into an integrated, holistic approach that is responsive to change and the pressures of a turbulent, highly regulated business environment.

 

This approach also entails incorporating GRC management into all core business processes — all GRC applications must be embedded in day-to-day activities, and ensuring information and process consistency across the organization. Doing so makes it easy to compile data for a comprehensive perspective on overall risk exposure, monitor risk and compliance, and modify business processes to respond actively to new opportunities and regulatory mandates.

So have you included enterprise risk and operational excellence as part of your strategic planning process?