Legacy tech and in-house spreadsheet-based governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions should be a thing of the past — the future of risk tech is risk cloud. Current systems don’t give organisations a full view of risk management processes, which complicates procedures and doesn’t allow for collaboration.
So, if not legacy solutions, where should organisations turn for GRC management? Let me offer my perspective; the next frontier of risk tech is in the cloud.
According to Gartner’s forecast, worldwide security and risk management technology spend will hit $123.8 billion in 2020, yet just 12% of all deployments are cloud-based. Also, because of the coronavirus pandemic, businesses are compressing digital transformation timelines.
The recent emphasis on digital transformation initiatives in non-GRC business areas only increases an organisation’s susceptibility to risk, putting greater importance on risk management. In order for proper measures to be taken, the same technological shift needs to happen within the GRC space. By allocating resources towards cloud solutions that can act as a central hub of risk, organisations have the opportunity to proactively transform risk into revenue.
Cloud-based solutions offer a better way for businesses struggling to properly mold GRC processes to reflect modern-day compliance requirements, and the needs of the organisation:
Shift your GRC program from reactive to proactive through automation
Grand View Research predicts robotic process automation (RPA) to become a $3.11 billion industry by 2025, up from $358 million in 2017. It’s growing incredibly fast within all industries and will continue to, as RPA can increase efficiency across all business sectors. But, why is automation so important within risk and compliance management, specifically?
GRC cloud-based solutions with automation capabilities allow you to work smarter, save time, and focus on strategic approaches to a company’s biggest challenges and lingering threats. For example, risk management solutions based in the cloud allow companies to more easily meet automated service-level agreement deadlines, configure notifications to best meet your team’s needs, and create custom mathematical functions facilitating reliable risk quantification processes.
All these capabilities shift a GRC program from reactive to proactive, which is critical to aligning with the shift of today’s priorities shifting towards digital transformation initiatives.
Risk managers will have to be aware that RPA is a force multiplier. Meaning, it’ll enhance good processes and make them better, but also make bad processes even worse. So, it’s vital for companies to have refined workflows before turning to technology, even cloud-based platforms, to garner continued GRC momentum.
The governance, risk and compliance landscape is changing
Invest in agile technology that fits you now and scales for your future
Like we discussed above, incorporating cloud-based solutions transforms your GRC program into a proactive one, rather than reactive. Automation helps accomplish this but so does a library of SaaS application integrations and better company-wide collaboration initiatives.
Risk management technology moving to the cloud allows organizations to better incorporate their entire technology stack into their GRC processes. With more available integrations, data can be exchanged more securely and can result in more impactful business insights. And, when information moves seamlessly between applications and platforms, it’s also easier to incorporate more employees and managers into a company’s risk culture and processes.
Investing in agile technology gives companies the opportunity to scale, and scale quickly. In a space like GRC and risk management, which relies on data and insights garnered through data, it’s important to not only invest in agile technology but also in software built on a graph database.
Graph databases, compared to relational databases, are much more flexible and offer greater user-visibility. Information is more easily stored and the infrastructure allows it to generate relationships between data sets so solutions can unlock more insights and functionality. Now, a cloud-based risk management solution can align with and improve pre-existing processes. As a result, Gartner predicted 100% annual growth through 2022, when naming graph databases one of its biggest data trends.
The flexibility of the cloud and graph databases give GRC solutions the ability to offer custom logic and task routing, customisable functionality, like drag and drop dashboards, and a library of configurable process applications.
Use risk to drive revenue and make better decisions for the future of your business
While many businesses view risk only in terms of mitigation and revenue protection, it can empower CEOs and board members to make better, more strategic decisions for the future of their business, ultimately leading to more revenue. And, cloud solutions assist by providing assets to shift a culture of risk to be more forward-thinking and data-driven.
With up to the minute reporting and the ability to provide holistic visualizations, risk managers can better quantify risk for their CEOs and board. Risk scoring methodologies, more easily adaptable with cloud technology, can help you identify and respond to the most pressing concerns affecting the health of your organisation.
Digital transformation initiatives have been recently made a priority by nearly every department in every industry. Don’t let governance, risk, and compliance processes fall behind. Risk tech is moving to the cloud, allowing businesses to mitigate risk, improve GRC processes, and become a key revenue driver. By properly investing in the right technology, organisations can scale for the future.
