GRCEssentials as a Strategy Tool

The combined disciplines of Governance, Risk and Compliance, the so called GRC, is an integrated approach that can support organisations of all types and sizes to increase their efficiency and effectiveness levels and achieve resilience.

GRC is the process of effectively managing the following three pillars of today’s businesses:

Governance

The structure, mechanisms and processes that enable organisations to define their strategic objectives and allocate the resources required to achieve them.
Risk

The process of identifying, analysing and controlling threats to an organisation’s future.
Compliance

The actions undertaken in order for organisations to ensure that they adhere to internal and external policies, rules and regulations.

The importance and pertinence of GRC in achieving strategic and operational goals is highlighted by prestigious organisations around the world. As Cap Gemini notes, “Effective GRC implementation helps the organization to reduce risk and improve control effectiveness, security and compliance through an integrated and unified approach that reduces the ill effects of organizational silos and redundancies” (https://www.capgemini.com/2017/10/grc-101-an-introduction-to-governance-risk-management-and-compliance/).

GRC provides a structured approach for strategically and appropriately managing the governance, risk and compliance of an organization and meeting the expectations of stakeholders. Where effectively implemented, GRC can support organisations bring together the skills and competences related to risk, compliance and governance under the same umbrella and managing them in a unified approach and not in isolation.

In today’s complex, volatile and constantly shifting business environment, looking at a challenge or an opportunity only from the risk, compliance or governance perspective is merely enough. Organisations can develop the capability to constantly have a 360º view, by integrating the disciplines of governance, risk and compliance in all areas of their operations.

A well-defined GRC framework will further ensure that the organisation is aligned and working at all levels, from the leadership to the operational level, towards the achievement of its strategic objectives. It will additionally ensure that the organisational resources, people, processes and systems, are properly utilised and that decision making is streamlined.

GRC, like any strategy development tool, will ensure that the organisation:

identifies, evaluates and selects the right strategic objectives,
has established proper channels of communication and a fit for purpose structure,
has proper reporting and feedback mechanisms,
has checks and balances at all levels,
evaluates performance and properly monitors the utilisation of its resources.

The GRCEssentials project

Establishing a GRC framework may prove daunting for most small organisations as the project requires specialised knowledge, skills and expertise, as well as dedicated resources, things small organisations usually lack. The intellectual outputs of the GRC Essentials project, co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme as a Strategic Partnership for vocational education and training, can support its target group, SMEs, SMOs and micro-enterprises, to internally develop the skills and competences required for the successful implementation of GRC.

By utilising the GRC Essentials learning material, amalgamated under a high-quality curriculum and complemented by a learning platform, organisations can acquire the competences and skills required to master the areas of GRC. The curriculum expands beyond the concepts of governance, risk and compliance to include the critical areas of project governance and data governance. In addition to the learning element, the GRC Essentials curriculum encompasses the “GRC Essentials One Model”, an innovative step-by-step iterative process model which employs five phases that can guide SMEs on how to implement GRC.

Each of the five phases of the “GRC Essentials One Model”, Analyse, Define, Plan, Implement and Verify, is carefully designed to support organisations navigate through the steps required to properly implement governance, risk and compliance.

The model merges the steps required to guide organisations through the process of analysing their business and competitive environment, deciding their strategic goals, defining their values, and principles, implementing their strategy and seeking continuous improvement. Depending on their maturity level, organisations may opt to skip specific steps or whole phases.

The work-based methodology developed under the framework of the project further complements the efforts of organisations to learn and implement GRC in their workplace.

Way forward...

The project consortium has successfully amalgamated and adapted the concepts of Governance, Risk management and Compliance (GRC), into an innovative hands-on tool that will be easy for SMEs and microenterprises to apply in their business environment.

By equipping organisations with the learning material and the structured process required to implement GRC in their workplace, the project provides SMEs and microenterprises with a strategy development tool.

If properly utilised the intellectual outputs of the GRC Essentials project can serve as a stepping stone towards the development of “efficient, effective and resilient SMEs, SMOs and microenterprises”.

Co-funded by

The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.