The importance of governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) to a business is well understood. Increasingly though, forward-thinking organizations are adding a final piece to the puzzle - performance.
We can describe the resulting discipline as GPRC - an integrated approach to synchronize data and activity across organizational practices to allow a company to more effectively achieve its goals, mitigate risk, comply with standards and address the interests of customers, investors, employees, and regulators.
This approach brings tangible benefits by improving collaboration and information sharing across diverse business functions, resulting in a more holistic picture of the internal and external factors influencing the overall performance of the organization. In this article, we’ll explore in greater detail how GPRC can positively affect vital activities within a business.
Informed strategic planning
Bringing together governance, performance, risk management, and compliance enables business leaders to develop strategies that accurately address the real-world pressures and drivers affecting the business.
Rather than responding to changes in a single specific direction, i.e. the introduction of new legislation, or the emergence of a new competitor, managers and executives have access to a balanced and complete overview of relevant factors, which helps to set a strategic direction that best navigates the risk-opportunity landscape.
Rapid decision making
Many organizations suffer from inertia around decision making, often because stakeholders have conflicting priorities, or are operating within information silos that prevent them from seeing the bigger picture.
An integrated Performance - The Missing Ingredient In Your GRC Strategy? approach removes some of these barriers to collaboration, enabling decision-makers across different business functions to share and understand key data around risk, compliance, or strategy across the organization, and therefore ensure that their efforts are synchronized and they are working towards mutually beneficial goals.
Consistency in reporting
Analyzing GPRC as a cohesive function, rather than addressing the component factors separately, provides more centralized and complete reporting, whether to management, shareholders, or external regulatory bodies.
All stakeholders have equal access to more comprehensive information and insights into the internal operating environment and external business context, ensuring that all parties are “on the same page” when it comes to planning and decision making.
Greater organizational agility
Managing risk, compliance, governance, etc. in separate silos presents businesses with significant challenges when attempting to implement change in response to shifting strategic priorities, internal pressure, or new external constraints.
A holistic approach that combines insight gathering, data analysis, business context, planning, and execution allows organizations to respond rapidly to changes arising in the operational environment and thereby maintain their competitive advantage.
Increased focus on outcomes
Traditionally, governance, risk, and compliance can be seen as oppositional factors which, while necessary for the smooth and regulated running of a business, require it to compromise on performance in one way or another.
An integrated GPRC approach considers performance as part of every decision, prioritizing outcome-based decision making, and allowing organizations to realize performance gains by better aligning their management of risk, compliance, or legal factors with the overall commercial strategy of the business.
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.