Best GRC Software in 2023

What Is GRC Software?

The term "GRC" (Governance, Risk & Compliance) is used in business to refer to the procedures and equipment that organizations use to coordinate their overall governance, risk management, and compliance initiatives. OCEG has defined GRC as "the integrated set of skills that allow an organization to seamlessly achieve goals, act with integrity and address uncertainty". GRC software helps organizations in identifying, assessing, and managing risks and it ensures utmost compliance with defined standards and regulations.

The GRC software primarily includes modules for audit management, risk assessment, policy management, and reporting. It assists companies in streamlining their GRC processes, enhances overall compliance process, and reduces any chances of compliance violations.

Why Use GRC Management Software?

There are numerous reasons for using Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) software such as

• Save time and money: By using GRC software, you can ensure top-notch quality standards for governance, risk, and compliance management. The powerful tool helps in reducing auditing efforts and manual work with automated processes. You'll be able to save your time by testing workflows, re-purposing documentation and getting automated email alerts when risks are reported, modified, or rectified.
• Risk forecasting: GRC solutions help you in staying ahead of non-compliance by detecting risk-relevant processes and impacted line items. You can manage and control the escalated range of requirements to mitigate financial loss, reduce risks and work according to new rules & regulations.
• Improved business process: Thanks to the process-driven methodology of GRC software, you can combine business process management with governance, risk, and compliance management. It allows you to improve business procedures while managing risks and adhering to rules. This facilitates the reduction of silos and the improvement of operational effectiveness and transparency.
• Better alignment of company objectives: When you align business or company objectives with GRC practices, it gives you more efficient and effective business operations along with improved stakeholder trust.
• Improved collaboration & communication: GRC helps to improve communication and collaboration within an organization by giving a common language & framework to different departments and functions. As a result, the decision-making becomes more effective and efficient.
• Who Uses GRC Software: Governance risk and compliance solutions are used by various industries and organizations of all sizes. The software is specifically beneficial for organizations that must comply with regulatory regulations like government agencies, healthcare and financial services. Some particular examples of who might utilize GRC software include:
• Compliance officers: GRC software is used by compliance officers to make sure that their companies abide by all relevant regulations, laws, rules, and industry standards. They can manage and monitor compliance standards, evaluate risks, and compile reports on compliance operations.
• Risk managers and Chief Risk Officers (CROs): These officers use GRC management software to detect and reduce risks to their company's finances, reputation, regulatory compliance and operations.
• Controllers and Chief Financial Officers: These experts employ GRS software for managing financial risks and ensuring that their company complies with financial standards and regulations.
• Information Security Officers (ISOs): GRC software is used by ISOs to manage cybersecurity risks, guarantee adherence to information security laws, and track their organization's security posture.
• Audit professionals: GRC software can be used by auditors to plan and carry out audits, track results and recommendations, and provide reports.

Key Features of GRC Software

Here are some prominent features of GRC software.

• Compliance management: By automating compliance processes and procedures, GRC software assists firms in adhering to several standards, including SOX, HIPAA, and GDPR.
• Incident management: GRC solutions help you in tracking and managing various incidents such as policy violations or security breaches and develop useful and appropriate response plans.
• Workflow Automation: Automation helps you in avoiding human errors and some latest GRC management software allows you to automate proof gathering by utilizing APIs. This not only saves your time but also saves your money as you can do more in minimal time. Furthermore, many procedures that earlier used to take hours can now be automated by GRC platforms, such as continuous control monitoring or automated controls.
• Robust security: The latest governance risk compliance software combines security and ease of use to ensure that your data is safe. Your staff can manage compliance without using complicated Excel formulas and without spending unlimited hours trying to navigate on an unintuitive platform. It's crucial to have secure access to the data, hence stakeholders will only have access to the information they require to do their tasks. You can manage which person has access to what while promoting team effort.
• Risk management: Risk governance and compliance solution helps in the identification, and evaluation of all the vulnerabilities and risks plus it assists in building strategies for handling them effectively.
• Classified records: You get the ability to mark critical GRC records as classified and make sure that only authorized people can access this information.
• User hierarchy: Owing to a user hierarchy, your managers and senior staff can analyze the records of all the users who are reporting to them.
• Approver configuration: Thanks to the approval configuration functionality, you can define various levels of approvals as per the definition of th With domain separation, you can segregate data, administrative work and processes into multiple logical groups known as domains. You get the power to control different aspects of this segregation, including which user can examine or access data.
• Viewing exceptions in GRC: Exceptions reporting is a critical process as it helps your firm quickly detect and rectify critical process issues before they turn into more complex problems. The usage of exceptions for managing errors has numerous advantages over conventional error management procedures.

Major Benefits of Using GRC Software

Let’s look at some noteworthy benefits of GRC software

• Complete customization: GRC management software offers a completely customizable method for identifying, measuring, and mitigating risk across the organization. It guarantees adherence to both external regulations and internal policies. Additionally, thanks to this cutting-edge software solution, users can add unique analytical grids, custom fields, and custom views to the data inventory.
• 24/7 automation: GRC management system minimizes the need for human data entry while maintaining compliance with rules and regulations. This solution is dynamic, assist in identifying compliance gaps, automates actions and supports flexible workflows. Moreover, all these capabilities assist in boosting the team's productivity and avoiding any likelihood of manual errors.
• Integration and smooth onboarding: Companies planning to use an enterprise GRC product often worry about a challenging adoption process and difficult implementations. Most of the modern GRC software provides your company with essential resources to get going and detailed onboarding tutorials. From certified support, training, and webinars to step-by-step tutorials, makes your onboarding journey as seamless as possible. Additionally, modern GRC management tools are designed to eliminate silos and give users a consistent interface for handling compliance information across teams.
• Real-time reporting and monitoring: The days of waiting for your team members to finish their tasks for running a report, going through the data, and providing meticulous insights are long gone. Nowadays, businesses must have quick access to information about operations and compliance statuses. Thanks to the integrated data sets and automation of compliance software, the data is updated in real-time to offer you comprehensive insights into your operational activities.
• Reduced costs: As a result of using GRC software, you can define business rules, and visualize controls & compliance roadmap, which allows your company to enjoy lower costs and successful business operations.
• Latest GRC Software Trends: You can follow the five new trends in GRC software to future-proof your business and stay ahead of upcoming compliance changes.
• Interconnected architecture: Companies are moving more data to cloud storage and other application infrastructures, GRC solutions are quickly learning to handle the interconnected risks such as control mapping and dynamic risks that have emerged due to the growing network of processes and systems.
• Pre-formed integrations: Primarily, the GRC integrations have been difficult to create and maintain, hence the most efficient software will now come with pre-formed integrations. It'll allow the users to quickly access data, share it across multiple systems, eliminate duplicity by automating evidence gathering and provide real-time alerts for any security issues.
• Business engagement: Given the growth of risk culture in businesses, there is an increase in demand for much greater visibility into the current security scenario. The latest GRC software can automatically detect risks and controls as per regulatory framework, plus they help in fast-tracking the auditing projects along with existing oversight for external and internal stakeholders.

How to Ensure Efficient GRC Software Implementation?

Here are a handful of recommendations if you are planning to implement a GRC platform that will assist you in getting the maximum return on your investment.

• Consider the end users: Who will use the GRC software? Why will they use this platform? Having the answers to this question can guide you in the right direction. For instance, if the user wants to generate reports, then you should implement a solution that can automate the report generation process. Removing roadblocks or solving problems for the users can ensure better acceptance and adaptability of the software. When your employees need to work on the software for numerous hours in a day, then a hassle-free integration of the platform can in focusing on their tasks instead of managing the whole system.
• One robust platform for success: When users frequently hop between emails and spreadsheets to store and share data, they waste too much time handling the process. You can make their work easier by installing comprehensive GRC software, which allows the entire organization to collaborate and store data. Ensure that end users can automate the majority of procedures with little hand-holding to enjoy all the functionalities of the GRC program. Moreover, automation can allow them to concentrate on the major responsibilities at hand.
• Determine operational gaps: When you are combining all the information from your stakeholders, you should also spend some time identifying any gaps in your operation. Look for duplicate data, missing data, duplicate processes, any manual steps that can be automated, and room for automating processes like emails, approvals, reporting, communication etc.

How to Choose the Right Governance Risk and Compliance Software?

Choosing the perfect Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) software can be a daunting task, as there are numerous points to consider. Here are some useful tips to keep in mind while choosing GRC software for your company:

• Scalability

  Without a GRC platform, managing the adoption of new frameworks, gathering evidence, and maintaining compliance becomes a time-consuming and challenging process. There are various security and legal dangers (not to mention the growing number of data breaches). Because of this, you should choose a tool that will streamline your work and ease out the compliance process, help you in allocating duties to stakeholders and assess the risks. Without a GRC platform, you might find it difficult to know if your program is successful or not, plus the idea of adding more frameworks is also stressful. That's why having a system that can scale as per requirement can help relieve some of the stress.

  All top-quality GRC software can grow with the organization and make the processes simpler and more reliable. Moreover, you want the product to grow with you, not stagnate as your company expands plus it also ensures that you are fully secure and compliant, no matter how much you expand.

• Integration

  If your GRC management software can't integrate with the existing tools, you'll have to do a lot of manual work and to & fro between multiple systems. From pulling data from the system to manually uploading reports on the platform, your day will get more complicated. Therefore, a platform with a robust integration with Okta, Cloudflare, AWS, Jira, and more will surely make your life easier. You can access all the compliance data, controls and evidence in one place, which will give you peace of mind and more time to focus on essential tasks.

  Seamless integration allows your team to collaborate effortlessly. Moreover, who would want a GRC platform that doesn’t have the necessary integrations? It will only increase the amount of manual work.

• Stakeholders Requirement

  The next step in the process should be to speak to numerous stakeholders, as multiple departments in your organization will be using this tool such as security, IT operations, corporate compliance, audit department and disaster recovery.

  Stakeholder insights will provide critical information on the objectives and needs of each department. Additionally, you should also watch how your staff members use the software. It’ll be difficult for you to achieve your compliance management or enterprise risk management objectives if you purchase GRC software without considering the requirements of your stakeholders.

• Assess multiple Vendors & GRC Tools

  When you have a clear picture of what you want from your software, you can start searching for vendors. You can visit their official website to know what type of requirements and which industry their software caters to. Ask your team to repeat the same process with numerous vendors, once you get down to the list of 5 potential vendors, then you can contact them using a request for information (RFI). Let them know about your specific needs and then ask them if they can provide an on-premise demonstration.

  Make sure that all stakeholders, external or internal, are present during the demonstration. Ask them to develop a meticulous system to assess and rank the GRC software, which will help in rationalizing the choosing procedure.

• GRC mobility and engagement

  Owing to the increased dependence on digital applications and modifications in regulatory frameworks, companies require a new strategy for GRC compliance. GRC solutions that can seamlessly combine automation capabilities, expert guidance and compliance content can assist in bridging the gap between strategies and their execution. Bringing the data into one centralized interface or portal which is supported on mobile phones can deliver a more user-friendly experience to the business.

What Is The Cost of GRC Software

Let's look at the costs of various GRC software in detail: