How do you leverage GRC and audit insights to inform strategic decision making?

Leveraging GRC and audit insights to inform strategic decision-making involves integrating risk and compliance data into the organization's overall strategy. By utilizing GRC tools to gather and analyze risk assessments, compliance reports, and audit findings, leaders can identify key areas of concern and opportunity. These insights help prioritize resources and initiatives aligned with strategic goals. Additionally, regular reviews of audit results can reveal trends and patterns that inform proactive risk management strategies. Engaging stakeholders in discussions around these insights fosters a culture of informed decision-making, ensuring that strategies are both resilient and aligned with regulatory requirements.

One of the benefits of using GRC technology solutions is that they can streamline and automate the GRC processes and tasks, as well as provide data-driven insights and recommendations for decision-making. For example, GRC technology can help build workflows, eliminate redundancy, enhance cybersecurity, and integrate data from various sources. However, GRC technology alone is not enough to ensure successful GRC outcomes. It also requires the involvement and collaboration of all the stakeholders across the organization and the adoption of a culture of accountability, transparency, and ethics. The overall goal of enterprise GRC is to continuously monitor, adapt, and improve the framework for strategic decision-making.

Understanding a business's sectors, customer base, and geographic scope is crucial. This insight aids in identifying applicable regulations, enabling executives to craft a compliance roadmap aligned with company objectives. Once compliance frameworks align with objectives, gap analysis assesses the organization's exposure risk. Auditing reveals these gaps, and their analysis informs strategic decision-making. This includes determining resource allocation for areas such as personnel, capital, and operational costs.

To have a proper GRC strategy and create an appropriate Governance, Risk, and Compliance organization and culture, it is crucial to have a business strategy at first. A three and five-year plan. This plan should include the organization’s vision, mission, and values. A GRC strategy is needed to identify risks that can affect this business strategy's achievement and create processes for monitoring and managing these risks. Furthermore, it is essential to periodically review the GRC strategy to keep it up-to-date with changing regulations and market trends. Finally, an effective Governance Risk and Compliance system requires communication, training, and KPI to measure if you align with your strategy and know your risks and issues.

Strategic decision-making begins with clarity. Instead of merely identifying risks, transform them into opportunities. By deeply understanding the objectives, you can anticipate shifts in the market and proactively adapt, turning potential threats into strategic advantages. Encourage a forward-looking perspective, where every risk is seen as a possible innovation trigger, driving your organization to explore uncharted territories.

Alignment and integration is the answer. I do not conduct seperate Compliance Audits. Instead, I align with my IA-team and integrate controls with the highest risk exposure rating, in the Audit team's annual operational audit plan. Compliance controls are then reviewed for design and operating effective, in the context of the business process/ controls being reviewed. Any recommended mitigation actions on raised observations then have holistic application, simultaneously improving the compliance control, and the relevancy of same in the business process.

The complex problem of aligning GRC and the audit function can be solved with an innovative approach. By creating individualized compliance software and sharing it with auditors, we can ensure they have a thorough understanding of the business, product, and culture. This software would provide real-time and historical insights into a company's performance against critical KPIs, making it easier to identify and address discrepancies. By leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, we can streamline processes and enhance communication within the department for maximum efficiency. Say goodbye to the complexity and hello to a smoother, more effective GRC and audit alignment.

Aligning GRC and audit functions is integral to my strategy in leveraging insights for strategic decision-making. Fostering collaboration ensures a holistic view of the governance, risk, and compliance landscape. This synergy enables a comprehensive understanding of organizational health, from identifying risks to assessing compliance effectiveness. Regular communication facilitates seamless insights exchange, optimizing resource allocation and enhancing overall strategic effectiveness. The alignment contributes to a resilient and well-informed organizational strategy.

It is critical to build *and show* a GRC framework and philosophy aligned with the business in mission, values, purpose, and team culture. One splinter can create a big divide. The time spent surfacing GRC team vision, mission, and objectives is well worth creating common ground to build on together. Create documents that help the business understand *how* the GRC team works, *what* the GRC team stands for, *when* to engage with the GRC team, and *why* the GRC team takes the approach they take in various situations. Transparency and clarity are kind and key.

Incorporate findings from risk assessments into the strategic planning process. This helps in identifying potential threats and opportunities that could influence business objectives.

I believe that communication and the way information is presented are the biggest challenges, especially when it comes to intangible subjects or risks that decision-makers may consider irrelevant. In an environment where stakeholders are more concerned with results, demonstrating how these processes protect value and are integrated into the organizational strategy is of great importance.

GRC and audit insights are crucial for strategic decisions. Understand objectives and risks, aligning them with strategy. Use GRC technology to optimize processes. Align GRC and audit functions, breaking silos. Adopt risk-based approach and common tools. Communicate insights clearly and actionably, tailoring to audience. Present findings, implications, and recommendations concisely. Foster culture of transparency and accountability. Implement actions based on insights, monitoring progress. Encourage cross-functional collaboration for effective strategies. This approach ensures proactive risk management and informed decision-making across the organization.

Leveraging GRC and audit insights involves a proactive approach to communication and action. After obtaining insights, I prioritize clear and timely communication across teams and stakeholders, ensuring transparency about risks and areas for improvement. Beyond communication, I actively translate these insights into actionable steps for strategic decision-making. This commitment to turning knowledge into action is crucial for driving meaningful change. Regular updates and feedback loops reinforce a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring strategic changes positively impact overall performance and resilience.

Effective communication and action are essential for leveraging GRC and audit insights. To maximize their value, it is crucial to present these insights clearly, concisely, and actionable, emphasizing key findings, implications, and recommendations. In my experiences in this field, adapting the communication style and format to cater to the audience's specific needs, be it senior management, board members, regulators, or external parties, is also important. Also, following up on the insights and monitoring the progress and outcomes of the corresponding actions taken to address them makes it very important to keep improving and staying.

From my humble past experiences and thousands of mistakes, the key problems in communciation from GRC professional perspective: a) GRC professionals mostly love to tell the Front Office what to do in reference to GRC work etc. This is wrong as GRC professionals are Never the risk owners and often lack of in-depth knowledge and mastery of the different processes of the Front office staff capability, lack alone the expertise of BoDs, Divisional Directors. In fact, GRC professionals must always begin with a series of good questions to find out what is going on - to sieve out the Top mgt's blind spot and decision traps. To enable GRC professionals to see both "Forest and trees" together. Rather than starting talking in the 1st place.

Continuous learning and improvement are integral to refining GRC and audit strategies. Utilizing insights garnered from these processes allows organizations to assess their effectiveness, pinpoint deficiencies, and adopt industry best practices. This ongoing evaluation helps benchmark against peers and set higher standards based on customer expectations and industry norms. Importantly, leveraging these insights fosters innovation and identifies growth opportunities, ensuring that GRC and audit functions dynamically support the organization's evolving strategic objectives.

Use audit findings to identify weaknesses in internal controls and implement improvements. Effective controls reduce risk and enhance operational efficiency.

Leveraging GRC and audit insights for strategic decision-making, I am committed to continuous learning and improvement. Regular analysis of these insights allows us to learn from successes and challenges, informing adaptive strategies. Encouraging a feedback loop through open communication channels facilitates insights sharing and proposed improvements. This commitment to continuous improvement refines decision-making processes, strengthening overall organizational resilience. It's a dynamic approach that ensures active use of insights for evolving and excelling in strategic endeavors.

I personally benefited alot from learning from my colleagues especially the extreme junior staff and the extreme senior and top divisional directors on their daily work. The most junior staff are often being delegated with all sorts of task - how did they prioritise their work as they need to have wellness? How this prioritisation of work is in-line with the prioritisation of strategic roll-out by the CEO? Will the CEO aware of this? b) The CEO and Divisional Directors - GRC can learn their intuition and how they use critical thinking and adapt to various situation to ensure the implementation of the strategic plan is heading the right direction. GRC must learn to ask lots of questions, have an inquisitive mind-set and talk less, humble

Unleashing the potential with continuous learning and improvement is one of the key points, my opinion. Gain valuable insights from GRC and audit to enhance your strategy and performance. Evaluate effectiveness, identify areas for improvement, and implement best practices. Benchmark against peers and customer expectations for innovation and growth.

Embedding Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) and audit practices into a company's culture is a lasting and highly beneficial initiative, albeit it is usually the most challenging piece of GRC. Achieving this requires executive leadership, ongoing commitment, and organizational-wide buy-in. Cybersecurity leaders play a key role by communicating the critical importance of cybersecurity to business success. They must foster clear understanding across the organization and develop strategies to engage different departments, assisting them in prioritizing GRC goals within their business development processes.

Embedding GRC and audit into the organizational culture is fundamental to my approach in leveraging insights for strategic decision-making. I actively promote a culture where GRC and audit considerations are integral to daily operations, fostering collective responsibility for governance, risk management, and compliance. Regular training programs ensure everyone understands the significance of these functions, creating an environment where teams appreciate the value of GRC and audit insights. This cultural integration ensures GRC and audit practices are not isolated functions but integral components contributing to a resilient and forward-thinking organizational ethos.

Embedding GRC and audit into your culture means gaining buy-in from all stakeholders so that they understand the value of GRC. When all stakeholders help protect the organization from risk you can achieve a principled and performant organization.

To embed GRC and audit into an organisational culture is often easy said than done. Quoting from the former CEO of GE, Jack Welch, "Core values drive behaviour, behaviour drives results". He once said that he took some 20-yr to get GE into the right culture. This means that culture is a process of getting things done constantly and consistently right and these executed by staff who must be benchmarked to their behaviour. Organisations need to reward the right behaviour and punish the bad behaviour to instil the right culture such that it can embed GRC and permit audit insights into the organisational culture in the long run.

To truly harness the power of GRC and audit insights, integrate them deeply into your organizational culture. Cultivate an environment that values accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement, viewing GRC and audit as essential tools for growth rather than mere compliance requirements. Promote open feedback, dialogue, and collaboration across all levels, positioning GRC and audit functions as strategic partners. This cultural shift will ensure that insights are effectively utilized to shape informed, strategic decisions.