3 Steps to Embracing a Unified Approach to Success in Today’s Market Place

The complexity of today’s competitive landscape requires organizations to continually improve how they create and deliver value to the market place.  Constant cost pressure, significant and ever changing governmental regulation and speed of new competitive entrants, to the market place, require a robust approach to understanding, managing and reporting on an organizations entire risk profile
3 basic steps to help you get there are:

1. Make the decision that Risk, Governance and Compliance will be a cognizant part of every decision and action the company takes. Make it a core competency reported on and monitored just as you would unit profitability.  GRC is no longer a back-office function, it must be integrated throughout the decision-making process.  It must live within your employees as strong as the culture of safety lives within each employee.
2. Take concrete steps:
   1. Establish a team with a board approved charter and time line for implementing the required changes
   2. Establish a Maturity Model for assessing process, procedures and organizational alignment
   3. Re-design process and procedures, based on above analysis, relocating responsibility to the front lines. Those who are responsible for the activities creating the compliance needs are the most qualified to ensure compliance.
   4. Focused training and feedback loops are invaluable to ensuring new process and procedures are embraced, implemented and continuously improved.
3. Implementation of a robust system that allows for dynamic tracking and reporting on organizational wide GRC goals. Basic requirements of an effective system are:
   1. It is flexible and easy to configure, easy to use and affordable to deploy company wide
   2. Maintains all data in one location, including process and procedures
   3. Ability to establish reporting pyramids that allow for various levels of approval as well as reporting structures
   4. Allows for robust calendaring including providing automated reminders of tasks, capturing who performs the task and moving notices up the reporting change.
   5. Continuously backed up and secure.

In this current business environment we face new opportunities, with a renewed optimism, allocate time and resources to the implementation of a Unified Approach to Success.
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By Robert Foss