Unlocking the Hidden Value in Your Current GRC Platform

Key Takeaways

• Widespread Underuse of GRC Platforms: Most organisations rely on only a small portion of their platform’s capabilities, limiting both return on investment and risk reduction.
• Underutilisation Is Organisational, Not Technical: Gaps are typically driven by implementation choices, team silos, and limited engineering expertise rather than platform constraints.
• Platforms Should Function as Systems: Treating GRC tools as integration hubs rather than document repositories unlocks significantly more operational value.
• Data Model Design Is Foundational: How risks, controls, assets, and evidence are structured determines the platform’s ability to support automation and insight.
• Incremental Automation Delivers Real Gains: Even simple workflows can reduce manual effort and improve consistency without new tools or major spend.

Deep Dive

In this article, Ayoub Fandi examines how organizations can unlock untapped value in their existing GRC platforms by applying an engineering mindset rather than defaulting to new tools or costly overhauls. Drawing on practical experience, he explores why most GRC platforms remain significantly underused and how data optimization, strategic integrations, and workflow design can transform them from passive documentation systems into active drivers of risk and control execution.

Why Your GRC Platform Is Doing Less Than It Should

GRC engineering doesn’t always require fancy new tools or complete platform overhauls. Sometimes, the most impactful changes come from reimagining how you use the investments you’ve already made. Your current GRC platform likely contains untapped potential that could transform your program’s effectiveness—if approached with an engineering mindset.

Let’s explore how to unlock this hidden value through data optimization, strategic integrations, and workflow redesign. Most organizations use less than 30% of their GRC platform’s capabilities. This piece explores how to extract maximum value from what you already have by applying core GRC engineering fundamentals.

Why It Matters

The Core Problem This Solves and Why You Should Care

Most organizations use less than 30% (a free guesstimation) of their GRC platform’s capabilities. That represents a significant waste of both financial investment and potential security improvement.

The reasons are familiar:

• Initial implementations focused only on basic compliance needs
• Limited understanding of advanced platform capabilities
• Lack of technical expertise within GRC teams
• Siloed operations between GRC and technical teams

This underutilization creates a dangerous spiral. Organizations pay for powerful tools but end up using them as glorified spreadsheets. When those tools inevitably fall short of expectations, the default response becomes “buy something new” rather than “use what we already have more effectively.”

The impacts of this pattern can be substantial:

• Security risks remain documented but unaddressed
• Engineering teams develop shadow GRC processes
• Budgets are wasted on overlapping tools, such as all-purpose GRC platforms, GRC automation tools, security automation tools, and security scoring tools
• Valuable integration opportunities are missed

By applying engineering principles to your existing platform, you can break this cycle and deliver significantly more value without additional major investments. As discussed in previous entries, treating your GRC program as a product rather than a one-time project creates the right mindset for continuous improvement.

Strategic Framework

The Conceptual Approach, Broken Down Into Three Principles

Stop thinking of your GRC platform as a storage repository for compliance documentation. Instead, view it as a central integration hub that connects security and risk data across your organization.

Most platforms, even older ones, offer ways to exchange data with other systems through APIs, file imports, or scheduled jobs. These connections form the foundation of a truly effective GRC architecture. As explored in From Silos to Systems: GRC Architecture, focusing on integration points rather than just the user interface transforms your platform from a passive documentation tool into an active component of your security ecosystem.

Prioritize Data Model Optimization

The most powerful engineering improvement you can make to any GRC platform is optimizing its data model. How you structure relationships between controls, risks, assets, and evidence fundamentally determines what the system can do.

Many organizations adopt default data structures without considering how they support automation, reporting, or decision-making. By deliberately designing your data taxonomy, hierarchies, and relationships, you unlock capabilities that previously seemed out of reach.

As discussed in the Central Data Layer piece, this foundation is critical to effective GRC regardless of tooling. Even basic platforms can deliver significant value when supported by a well-designed data model.

Engineer Workflows, Not Just Processes

Most GRC implementations focus on documenting processes rather than engineering workflows. The distinction matters:

• Process documentation describes what should happen
• Workflow engineering makes it happen automatically

By treating your GRC platform as a workflow engine instead of a documentation repository, you can create automated sequences that drive consistent execution. This shift—from documentation to orchestration—changes how controls are implemented and how evidence is collected.

The goal is to create systems that drive action, not just record risk.

Execution Blueprint

Three Practical Steps to Put This Strategy Into Action

1. Conduct a Platform Capability Assessment

Before optimizing your platform, you need to understand what it can actually do beyond your current usage. Start by creating an inventory of:

• Unused modules or features already licensed
• Integration capabilities, including APIs, webhooks, and import/export functions
• Workflow automation options such as conditional rules, notifications, and approvals
• Reporting and visualization tools beyond standard dashboards
• Data model customization options available to administrators

Don’t rely solely on vendor documentation. Speak with other users through communities, user groups, and Slack or Discord channels. Engage directly with your vendor’s professional services team, which often has insight into advanced use cases that aren’t immediately obvious.

Pay particular attention to capabilities that could reduce manual effort in the most time-consuming GRC activities. For most organisations, these include evidence collection, control testing, and risk assessment processes—the core activities discussed in Control Orchestration.

2. Optimize Your Data Structure for Integration

Even within existing platform constraints, most organizations can make meaningful improvements to their data model:

• Standardize naming conventions across all GRC data elements
• Create a consistent taxonomy for risks, controls, and assets
• Implement metadata that enables filtering and automation
• Design hierarchical relationships that support roll-up reporting
• Map connections between risks, controls, assets, and business processes

The objective is to enable meaningful connections rather than isolated records. This typically requires some initial data cleanup but pays dividends by enabling automation and more intelligent reporting.

Establish a core set of standard fields that act as universal identifiers across systems. For example, asset identifiers in your GRC platform should match those in your CMDB or vulnerability scanner to support future integrations. This approach directly supports building a central data layer for the organisation.

3. Build Low-Effort, High-Value Automation

With an optimized data model in place, you can begin implementing automation that delivers immediate value:

• Evidence collection workflows with reminders and escalations
• Control testing schedules with automated task assignment and tracking
• Status update processes that notify stakeholders of changes
• Approval workflows that capture decisions and accountability
• Reporting jobs that generate and distribute key metrics

Start small. Focus on automations that eliminate the most painful manual tasks. Early success builds momentum for more sophisticated workflows, similar to those explored in the Control Orchestration entry.

Even simple automation can have outsized impact. A basic scheduled report or notification workflow can save hours each month, freeing your team to focus on higher-value security and risk activities rather than administrative work.

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