If you’re new to the concept of GPRC, you may find it useful to review our introductory article, Performance - The Missing Ingredient In Your GRC Strategy?, to gain a better understanding of the underlying theory. To summarise here though, GPRC is the integration of the following business disciplines:
Governance: standardizing and optimizing organizational policies, processes, and structures.
Performance: measuring organizational achievement against defined strategic goals.
Risk management: identifying and mitigating risks that may negatively impact the business.
Compliance: ensuring organizational activities comply with the relevant laws and regulations.
Implementing an integrated GPRC strategy aims to synchronize each of these four components, giving leadership greater visibility and insight into the interdependencies between them, and resulting in improved outputs across the board.
Let’s look at how organizations just getting started with GPRC can follow a 5-stage roadmap to achieve a successful implementation.
1. Establish your framework
The first stage of your roadmap is developing a GPRC framework (assuming you do not already have one in place). This involves a process of comprehensive evaluation, looking at current business goals, key processes, human resources, and internal controls across each of the constituent disciplines.
The aim of this analysis is to identify areas where improvements are needed, in order to better synchronize GPRC, to establish how well each discipline contributes to the overall strategic direction of the organization, and to understand the changes in technology, process, performance, or management which may be necessary to meet your goals.
2. Assign responsibilities
Once you have laid the groundwork in phase 1, the next step is to assign roles and responsibilities for executing, monitoring, and reviewing the GPRC implementation process. Picking the right people for the right tasks is a vital ingredient in the overall success of the process - you’ll need to rely on their ability to adapt to new ways of thinking and drive institutional change.
Depending on your specific circumstances, this may involve a number of tasks, for example, migration or replication of policies and procedures between departments, reskilling or upskilling key staff (and making provision for onboarding new employees if needed), assigning leadership roles for different aspects of the process, and so forth.
3. Select the right technology
Implementing and managing GPRC in combination is far simpler if you have the appropriate software in place. While some organizations prefer to utilize a mixture of existing tools, your chance of success is greater if you opt for a purpose-built platform, which is designed to integrate governance, performance, risk management, and compliance in one package.
Look for a solution that addresses all aspects of your GPRC implementation, whether that’s centralized management of policies, risk evaluation, and monitoring, reporting on key performance metrics, or performing compliance audits. Having all the information you need in one place, accessible in real-time, and able to be shared across departments makes all the difference as you navigate GPRC for the first time.
4. Integrate with your workflows
With the right framework, the right people, and the right technology in place, it’s time to look at how everything fits together - planning how you will integrate GPRC management into your existing workflows, or identifying which processes may need to be updated or tweaked.
You may need to set up integrations between your GPRC software and existing business systems, provide additional training to staff in key roles, or adapt reporting hierarchies to better centralize information sharing. As you identify each new task, assign a priority, deadline, and owner to keep the project running on schedule.
5. Review, adapt and improve
The key to success with GPRC is seeing it as a continual process, rather than a single project to be completed and signed off. The enhanced productivity and improved results you’ll see having implemented your GPRC framework are only the beginning. You’ll need to update, adapt and improve your strategy month-on-month to keep pace with a dynamic business environment.
This doesn’t mean adding a significant workload, however. Once the initial implementation is complete, it’s a matter of making consistent progress by regular analysis and review of the GPRC landscape. Regular assessments of your control procedures, reviewing and editing policies as necessary, keeping abreast of regulatory or legal developments, and analyzing and tweaking KPIs should all be done periodically, facilitating continual improvement, and achieving greater efficiency.
How to streamline the GPRC implementation process
A GPRC implementation can look overwhelming at first sight - there are a lot of interrelated tasks which need to be completed in the right sequence. But don’t be put off - with a defined roadmap, like the one we’ve illustrated here, plus a capable software solution to manage each aspect of the project pre-and post-implementation, getting to grips with GPRC is relatively straightforward.
FIND OUT HOW GPRC CAN HELP YOUR ORGANIZATION
If you’re interested in finding out more about how an integrated approach to GPRC can help to build organizational resilience, increase agility and widen accountability across business functions, you can register for our free upcoming webinar.
To find out how Corporater’s flexible platform can help your organization succeed in introducing and maintaining a combined approach to governance, performance, risk management, and compliance, book in your free demo or request a detailed quote here.