May 21, 2023
Agile GRC: The Benefits of Building a Future-Proof GRC Program (Best Practices)
Are you struggling to keep up with regulatory changes, compliance obligations, or constant industry changes? Well, Agile GRC could be what you are looking for.
In this article, you will learn how this innovative methodology helps you streamline your GRC processes, improve collaboration, and respond quickly to changing risk environments while lowering costs and boosting productivity.
It's time to begin!
What is Agile GRC?
Let's start by defining this concept. Agile GRC is a methodology to improve the efficacy and efficiency of Governance, Risk, and Compliance processes. It focused on flexibility, adaptability, and collaboration.
This powerful methodology is becoming increasingly popular because it offers a more adaptive and flexible method of managing GRC processes, allowing your company to react more quickly to the shifting regulatory and risk environment while reducing costs and increasing productivity.
Now, it's important to highlight that Agile GRC needs ongoing planning, observation, and adjustment of GRC operations in response to shifting business needs.
What Does Agility Mean for Your Organization?
Agility enables your business to expedite GRC processes, lower compliance expenses, and boost accountability and transparency. Also, it allows you to respond quickly to emerging threats and compliance requirements, which lowers the risk of compliance violations and reputational harm.
Furthermore, risk agility enhances your organization's capacity to adapt to changes in business models and external factors. By selecting the right GRC solution, your company can seamlessly align with its growth agenda. This strategic alignment not only prepares you to tackle risks proactively but also positions your business to thrive in an ever-changing landscape.
Drive Strategic Growth: Risk agility empowers your company to integrate risk management with growth strategies, ensuring that you're not just reacting to changes, but capitalizing on them.
Proactive Risk Management: Instead of waiting for changes to impact your business, agility prepares you to address potential risks head-on, maintaining stability and fostering innovation.
In essence, risk agility is not just about managing risks—it's about ensuring compliance obligations are handled early in the development process by integrating GRC practices into the agile development lifecycle. By using this approach to manage your GRC processes, you may respond to new risks and compliance needs more rapidly, lower costs, and increase transparency and accountability.
An effective GRC program does more than streamline processes; it actively saves money for businesses in multiple ways, such as:
Compliance and Fines: Ensuring compliance with regulations helps avoid costly noncompliance fines, safeguarding your financial resources.
Insurance Premiums: Companies with robust GRC programs often benefit from reduced insurance premiums, qualifying for lower rates due to their proactive risk management.
Centralization and Efficiency: Centralizing GRC processes with a software solution enhances cross-functional visibility, reducing the need for manual monitoring and management. This efficiency translates into significant cost savings, freeing up resources for strategic initiatives.
Implementing a GRC strategy not only fortifies your organization's risk management but also optimizes financial performance by minimizing unnecessary expenditures.
How Do Risk Management Programs Benefit from a Strong Strategy?
Balancing Growth and Protection
When companies apply a proactive approach to risk management, they often find a more harmonious balance between fostering growth and safeguarding their assets. Rather than merely reacting to cybersecurity threats, an offensive strategy empowers organizations to anticipate potential risks and integrate these considerations into their broader strategic goals.
Empowering Business Units
A key benefit of this proactive stance is its ability to distribute risk management responsibilities across different business units. By equipping each division with the tools and authority to manage its risks, these units can respond faster and make decisions that align with their specific objectives, adapting swiftly when situations change.
Enhancing Risk Agility
Adopting a strategy enhances agility within risk management processes. This adaptability allows organizations to respond not only to internal shifts but also to external developments that may impact their business model. Staying ahead of potential threats means companies are not just prepared for what’s next but are also positioned to leverage these challenges as opportunities for growth.
Strategic Technology Implementation
Choosing the right governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions is vital in implementing an offensive strategy. These tools should align with and support the company’s growth agenda, thereby enabling a forward-thinking approach to risk management. This preparedness ensures businesses are ready to confront risks head-on, instead of merely bracing for impact.
The Evolution of Data Breaches and Cyber Threats
In recent years, data breaches and cyber threats have escalated significantly, becoming more sophisticated and impactful. This evolution is highlighted by several key trends and statistics.
Rising Odds of Breaches
The likelihood of experiencing a data breach has surged. Recent studies reveal that from one year to the next, the probability of an organization falling victim to a breach jumped dramatically, showing that no business is immune to these threats.
Financial Impact on Large Companies
For large enterprises, defined as those with over 25,000 employees, the financial ramifications of data breaches are staggering. The losses can reach millions, underscoring the vital need for robust cybersecurity measures.
Smaller Enterprises Aren't Exempt
Even smaller companies, those with 500 to 1,000 employees, are not exempt from severe financial impacts, often facing costs in the millions due to cyber incidents. This highlights the universal nature of cyber threats across different business sizes.
Customer Turnover Costs
The aftereffects of a breach extend beyond immediate financial losses. On average, businesses suffer significant customer turnover post-incident, leading to further financial drains. This shows how breaches not only impact a company's finances but also its customer relationships.
These trends indicate a pressing need for businesses to enhance their cybersecurity strategies. The evolution of cyber threats poses a risk that requires constant vigilance and adaptation to protect sensitive data and maintain customer trust.
Understanding the Financial Impact of Data Breaches on Companies
Data breaches can have staggering financial ramifications, varying significantly with the size of the company. For large corporations with over 25,000 employees, the financial hit can be monumental, often reaching around $5.1 million. This substantial sum reflects not only direct response and recovery costs but also includes litigation and regulatory fines.
Companies on the smaller end of the scale, specifically those with 500 to 1,000 employees, also face significant financial strain, typically incurring costs of approximately $2.65 million. Although the monetary figures are lower compared to larger firms, the relative impact can be more severe given their smaller revenue bases.
Moreover, the costs do not end at immediate responses. Another critical consequence is the loss of customer trust. On average, losing customers following a breach chips away at an additional $1.4 million from company revenues. This loss often stems from damaged reputations and the erosion of long-term customer loyalty.
Summary of Breach Costs
Large Enterprises (25,000+ employees): ~ $5.1 million
Midsize Companies (500-1,000 employees): ~ $2.65 million
Customer Attrition Costs: ~ $1.4 million per breach
Accounting for these figures underscores the importance of investing in robust cybersecurity measures to mitigate potential financial disasters across all company sizes.
How Can You Achieve Agile GRC? The Best Practices
You can achieve agile GRC by creating a new mindset and being willing to accept and understand changes while focusing on continual improvement and value generation.
Being agile allows you to establish a more effective and efficient GRC program that is better equipped to respond to changing business and regulatory requirements.
How can you achieve this?
By embracing agile concepts and using some of the following best practices:
Developing a Big-Picture Plan
Creating a comprehensive plan for implementing agile GRC requires a deliberate and systematic approach that considers the present state, the ideal state, and the activities necessary to close the gap.
Get the Right Leaders on Board with the Plan
This methodology requires leaders who can promote collaboration, drive change, and produce outcomes while keeping a continuous improvement attitude and coordinating GRC procedures with the overarching business strategy and objectives.
Report Early and Often
Agile GRC strongly emphasizes early and frequent reporting because it allows stakeholders to track developments, spot patterns, and make data-driven decisions that enhance the efficacy and efficiency of GRC procedures.
Engage with First-Line Defence
Organizations can develop a culture of risk awareness and accountability that supports Agile GRC processes and enhances overall risk management capabilities by defining roles and responsibilities, delivering training and awareness, fostering collaboration, utilizing data and analytics, monitoring and reporting, and continuously improving.
Strengthen Integration
Agility allows organizations to create a more integrated approach to GRC. This integration helps align business objectives, facilitates collaboration and communication, and improves overall risk management and compliance practices.
By aligning risk management processes with strategic planning, companies can position themselves for proactive growth. This alignment enables organizations to integrate risk management activities directly into business units. Each unit gains the autonomy to move swiftly and make informed, risk-adjusted decisions that support the company's strategic goals.
Such an approach ensures that risk considerations are embedded in every strategic decision, driving growth priorities and enhancing the organization's ability to adapt in a dynamic market. As a result, businesses not only improve their compliance and risk management practices but also align these with their overarching strategic objectives, fostering a more resilient and agile organizational framework.
Improve Processes with Technology
Using automation tools such as StandardFusion to streamline and standardize GRC processes is common in agile GRC. Automation can help reduce manual efforts and errors, improve data quality, and provide better visibility into GRC activities, allowing for better integration.
Encourage Collaboration
Agile GRC emphasizes collaboration among various teams and functions, such as compliance, risk management, and IT. This collaboration has the potential to break down silos and improve communication, resulting in better integration.
Plan your Transition
It is critical to assess the current state of GRC practices and identify areas for improvement in order to plan an organization's transition to Agile GRC. Next, you need to create an Agile GRC framework and a transition roadmap after identifying key stakeholders and training the team. Finally, to ensure a smooth transition, scale up the approach and monitor implementation for any issues.
The Benefits of Agile GRC
Let's jump right into it; the following are some of the most critical benefits you can get from this approach:
Agile GRC Enhances Risk Mitigation
You can use agile GRC tools like StandardFusion to centralize and connect data, workflows, and processes across various GRC functions, such as risk, compliance, internal audit, controls, and more. As a result, GRC teams can respond quickly to a rapidly changing risk environment and mitigate identified risks by having information in one place. Linking risks to objectives helps your organization's culture shift, so everyone understands your program's importance in achieving results.
Elevate Decision-Making and Performance
Adopting GRC tools provides greater oversight and reduces unexpected loss events, leading to a more comprehensive view of your company's risk and compliance posture. This improved visibility empowers leaders to make better-informed decisions about investments, development, and procurement.
Informed Leadership: With a clearer understanding of risks and objectives, leaders can confidently steer the organization.
Tangible Benefits: Better decisions translate into more successful product launches, strategic market expansions, seamless technology implementations, and fruitful partner engagements.
By embracing these tools, your organization not only enhances its internal processes but also positions itself for strategic growth and success in an ever-evolving business landscape.
Improved Planning for New Regulatory Requirements and Obligations
Directors and business leaders are held more accountable for compliance and governance than ever, and transparency must be at the core of your organization. Regarding GRC, an agile operations strategy means that new regulatory and legislative requirements can be quickly integrated into your systems, ensuring you never fall behind on your obligations.
Empowered Data-Driven Decisions
The digitalization of risk data collection and communication will transform data integrity. Aggregate risk analytics and visibility of risk posture assist in decision-making. As a result, the board has the right information at the right time, allowing companies to implement key GRC actions more quickly. Risk is contextualized within the context of your overall business, making it relevant, clear, and actionable.
Agile GRC Boosts Efficiency, Accuracy, and Response Time
Agile GRC employs automation, effective mapping technology, and customizations to improve business processes, such as updating and notifying key stakeholders of relevant regulatory updates. It can also help in improving response times. The sooner you have complete and accurate information about a risk event, the better can communicate and collaborate with your team members toward a solution. By removing silos, Agile GRC enables quick and flexible collaboration.
How Choosing the Right GRC Solution Supports a Company's Growth Agenda
Selecting an appropriate Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solution is vital for any company looking to expand and innovate while managing risks effectively. Here’s how it can directly support a company's growth strategy:
Proactive Risk Management
An effective GRC solution allows businesses to anticipate risks rather than merely reacting to them. By identifying potential threats early, companies can strategize and implement control measures, minimizing potential disruptions. This proactive approach ensures that growth initiatives are not hindered by unforeseen challenges.Streamlined Compliance
Compliance with industry regulations can be burdensome, but a good GRC solution automates many of these processes. By ensuring policies are up to date and audits are efficiently managed, companies can focus more resources on growth activities rather than being bogged down by regulatory requirements.Enhanced Decision Making
GRC tools provide critical data insights that empower decision-makers. By offering a clear view of risks and compliance statuses, leaders can make informed decisions that align with the company's growth objectives, reducing guesswork and enhancing strategic planning.Efficient Resource Allocation
By consolidating risk management and compliance tasks, GRC solutions free up valuable time and resources. This allows companies to allocate their human and financial resources towards growth-focused projects, accelerating innovation and development.Boosted Stakeholder Confidence
Demonstrating effective risk management and compliance through a robust GRC system builds trust among investors, customers, and partners. As stakeholders gain confidence in the company's stability and foresight, they are more likely to support its growth endeavors.
In summary, the right GRC solution equips a company with the tools to manage risks effectively, streamline compliance, and allocate resources efficiently— all of which are crucial for supporting robust and sustainable growth.
Building an Agile GRC Program with StandardFusion
Developing an Agile GRC program is an essential step for any organization looking to manage risks, comply with regulations, and achieve its governance objectives.
The following is critical.
This program should be tailored to your organization's specific needs and objectives, and all relevant stakeholders, including executives, managers, employees, and external partners " they all should be involved.
Also, you should base your GRC program on a framework that includes best practices and standards for risk management, compliance, and governance, such as ISO 31000, COSO, and COBIT.
Using StandardFusion, you can create a well-designed GRC program that can assist your organization in improving risk management capabilities, lowering compliance costs, and improving reputation and stakeholder trust.
Centralized Process Management
Centralized process management enabled by StandardFusion's GRC tool contributes to the Agile GRC program by serving as a single source for policies and procedures that your team and other members of the organization can access.
This centralization promotes policy consistency and standardization, ensuring that everyone follows the same guidelines and procedures. Also, with a centralized policy management tool, you can easily update information and gain real-time visibility. This allows quick, efficient team communication and more effective responses to changes and risks.
Enables Integration Across the Board
You can define how your policies fit into your compliance and risk management program using StandardFusion's platform. It assists you in connecting frameworks, controls, risks, and assets.
This Integration will allow you to understand workflows, which are the bedrock of effective policy management. They provide structure to policy development and implementation.
Well-structured processes supporting agile GRC can save compliance teams time and resources by specifying how your company will respond to specific events. This is also what regulators look for when determining whether your policy management program meets standards.
Effective Communication
Using our GRC tool, you can track any activity on your policies, including changes. It will tell you what changes were made, who made them, and when they occurred. This allows you to see if you're using the most recent versions of your policies and whether or not the people in charge of updating them have made the necessary changes. It also tracks who has acknowledged the policy, ensuring accountability.
Enable Customizations
StandardFusion's improved in-app document editing provides robust editing options while streamlining the user experience. It allows you to create policies from scratch and import existing rules into the system using an in-software editing tool that supports version control.
This feature saves you time by allowing you to edit documents within the app. Also, the automation of policy management systems ensures that personnel can access, develop, edit, modify, and approve documentation.
Powerful Data Analytics
StandardFusion's GRC platform enables you to analyze data and identify trends, patterns, and anomalies through powerful analytics and reporting capabilities. This can assist you in identifying potential risks, compliance gaps, and areas for improvement. Also, it helps you take a data-driven approach to an Agile GRC program, enhancing your ability to manage risks, comply with regulations, and achieve governance goals.
Key Takeaways
Agile GRC is a popular approach for managing GRC processes, allowing you to react quickly to shifting regulatory and risk environments while lowering costs and boosting productivity.
Agility in GRC provides several advantages, such as boosts in responsiveness, collaboration, transparency, resource efficiency, and continuous improvement.
Agile GRC encourages communication and collaboration between various business units, enabling a coordinated reaction to resolve risks and compliance problems early on.
Achieving agile GRC requires embracing agile concepts and using best practices such as developing a big-picture plan, engaging the right leaders, reporting early and often, and improving processes with technology.
The benefits of agile GRC include risk mitigation, improved planning for new regulatory requirements and obligations, empowered data-driven decisions, and boosted efficiency, accuracy, and productivity.
To achieve agile GRC, it is critical to create a new mindset and focus on continual improvement while being willing to accept and understand changes.
In a nutshell:
By implementing Agile GRC, you can expedite GRC processes, lower compliance expenses, and boost accountability and transparency. Moreover, you'll be able to respond quickly to emerging threats and compliance requirements, which lowers the risk of compliance violations and reputational harm.
Reach out to our team at StandardFusion and start implementing agile GRC in your organization today and enjoy the benefits of a more integrated and effective approach to Governance, Risk, and Compliance!
