Reevaluating GRC: Beyond ROI to Real Business Impact

Key Takeaways

• GRC is More Than a Tool: GRC is not just about software or automation; it’s a set of integrated practices that help organizations achieve their objectives, manage risks, and maintain compliance.
• Efficiency is Just the Beginning: While efficiency gains are important, the real value of GRC comes from improved decision-making and stronger outcomes, not just time savings.
• Effectiveness Reduces Real Risk Exposure: GRC should be focused on reducing actual risk exposure to organizational objectives, ensuring that risk management efforts are aligned with business goals.
• Resilience Helps Manage Disruptions: True resilience in GRC is about detecting and mitigating disruptions before they escalate into full-blown crises, protecting organizational objectives in the process.
• Agility Enables Adaptation to Change: GRC enables organizations to navigate through uncertainty, proactively respond to new risks, and adapt to changes in a rapidly evolving business environment.

Deep Dive

In a recent discussion with a trusted colleague, Stefan, the Head of Risk and Governance at a major UK retail company, I was reminded of an essential lesson in governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC). This conversation, held one evening in Mayfair, focused not just on the tools and platforms available today, but on the true value of GRC, and why too many organizations miss the point. If you're looking for a deeper dive into the ROI-focused conversation that sparked this reflection, I recommend reading my article GRC Value: It’s More Than Just ROI, which explores the need to look beyond mere efficiency and towards strategic objectives.

The moment that struck me the hardest came when Stefan glanced at his phone, reading a message from a vendor promoting their latest GRC tool. The message boasted claims of cutting audit prep time in half, of saving 75% on risk assessments, and other typical buzzwords. He simply smiled and said, “Nobody buys a GRC tool to make the risk guy's job easier. What I care about is how it will reduce risk to our corporate objectives.”

This comment encapsulates the crux of the issue: GRC isn’t about streamlining tasks for the sake of efficiency. It’s about enabling the organization to achieve its objectives reliably, reduce exposure to uncertainty, and act with integrity. Time savings matter, yes, but they are merely the enabler. They don’t tell the whole story.

GRC: A Capability, Not Just a Tool

First and foremost, it’s essential to clarify one key point: GRC is not simply a piece of software. It’s a capability, an integrated set of practices that spans governance (achieving objectives), risk management (addressing uncertainty to those objectives), and compliance (acting with integrity). These are strategic practices that transcend tools, systems, or processes.

The reality is that every organization practices GRC in some form, even if they don’t use that label. The real question is whether we can make our GRC practices more efficient, effective, resilient, and agile? Here, technology can play a vital role, but it should be seen as an enabler, not the end-all and be-all.

Too often, organizations fall into the trap of viewing GRC as a tool selection project rather than a business discipline. They focus on “getting compliant” without understanding how compliance connects to the organization's strategic objectives. They automate controls without assessing whether these processes genuinely mitigate risk. In essence, the right technology can transform GRC practices, but only when it supports a broader organizational capability.

Four Dimensions of GRC Value

To better understand the real value GRC brings, we need to examine it through a framework based on four key dimensions: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Resilience, and Agility. Each of these dimensions aligns with the core GRC mission of enabling organizations to achieve objectives, navigate uncertainty, and uphold integrity.

Let’s break these down:

1. Efficiency: The Foundation, Not the End

Efficiency is often the first value touted when discussing GRC platforms and rightly so. Many organizations waste significant time and resources managing risk, compliance, and controls via disjointed, manual, or siloed processes. The cost of these inefficiencies extends beyond just personnel hours; it leads to missed opportunities and increased risk of error.

Consider a global consumer goods company that used to have five separate teams managing overlapping third-party risk processes, each with its own forms, templates, and reporting structures. It led to redundant work and inconsistent decision-making. After implementing a unified GRC platform, they saved 80% of the administrative effort and gained centralized visibility into their vendor risk exposure.

While these time savings were valuable, the true value wasn’t in completing forms faster, it was in making better decisions with a single source of truth. Efficiency, therefore, is the first step in realizing GRC value. But it doesn’t just stop there.

2. Effectiveness: Reducing Real Risk Exposure

Effectiveness is where GRC truly starts to show its worth. The most important question here is whether your GRC practices are genuinely reducing risk exposure (that is, addressing real uncertainty to strategic, financial, and operational objectives).

Too often, GRC programs focus on the wrong things. Companies track risks, controls, and incidents but fail to connect them to outcomes or objectives. They may have comprehensive risk registers, but without linking them to the bottom line, they’re missing the point.

A financial services firm I worked with revamped their GRC approach by linking risk data with control performance, audit findings, and business objectives. The result? A clearer line from GRC activities to organizational outcomes. Effectiveness is about whether you’re managing risks within tolerance and can prove it, not how fast you can complete risk assesments.

3. Resilience: Managing Disruptions Before They Escalate

Resilience in GRC is about more than just disaster recovery plans or business continuity documentation. It’s the ability to detect, contain, and recover from disruptions before they escalate into full-blown crises.

For example, a manufacturing company faced a cyber incident involving a supplier. While IT flagged it as a potential risk, the procurement and compliance teams were unaware, and there was no centralized visibility. After implementing a GRC platform with real-time monitoring and automated alerts, they were able to flag and mitigate similar incidents quickly, minimizing operational impact.

Resilience isn’t about avoiding disruption, it’s about being prepared and able to respond swiftly, minimizing the impact on business operations and protecting organizational objectives.

4. Agility: Adapting to Change with Confidence

Finally, agility is the ultimate value that GRC brings. In an era of rapid change, driven by new regulations, emerging technologies, and shifting geopolitical landscapes, organizations need the ability to quickly adapt their risk management strategies.

A digital services company expanding into Southeast Asia and the Middle East used to struggle with fragmented risk management practices across regions. By implementing a unified GRC framework, they gained visibility into regulatory obligations, third-party risks, and operational dependencies. This allowed them to scale risk management in tandem with their expansion, ensuring that their growth was not only fast but sustainable.

Agility means being able to anticipate and respond to changes in the business environment. With the right GRC strategy, organizations can steer confidently toward their objectives, even as external conditions evolve.

GRC is a Strategic Advantage

While efficiency is important, it’s just the beginning of the true value that GRC can bring to an organization. The most impactful GRC programs go beyond time savings to deliver measurable reductions in risk, greater resilience in the face of disruption, and the agility to navigate uncertainty.

For those considering GRC technology, it’s time to stop selling it as a productivity booster. Instead, focus on how GRC enables organizations to achieve strategic objectives, adapt to an ever-changing landscape, and protect their integrity.

That’s not just good risk management, that’s good business.

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