Growing industry-specific and governmental compliance and security regulations, tied with the immediate need to effectively manage and mitigate the increasing business and operational risks inherent to competing in a complex global market have turned the acronym “GRC” into a frequent boardroom topic. Traditionally viewed as separate operational silos, organizations are increasingly converging governance, risk management and compliance into an integrated enterprise framework.

Organizations in all industries have matured their perspectives on GRC and are expanding their initiatives to cover an integrated and enterprise-level view of risk and compliance. The goal is to effectively define, manage and monitor the external and internal business environments to assure the protection and growth of value within risk tolerance and legal boundaries. This involves moving toward a federated organizational structure, where GRC functions are centrally overseen, but responsibility is distributed across all lines of business.

Defining GRC as a whole requires a solid holistic definition of each component. Definitions for governance, risk and compliance (influenced by standards, professional associations and regulatory agencies) are as follows:

• Governance. The culture, policies, processes, laws and institutions that define the structure by which companies are managed. Corporate governance includes the relationships between stakeholders and the goals for which the corporation is governed.
• Risk. The effect of uncertainty on organizational objectives. Risk management involves coordinated activities to direct and control an organization toward fulfilling opportunities while mitigating the negative consequences of events.
• Compliance. The act of demonstrating adherence to external laws and regulations as well as corporate policies and procedures. Compliance management involves the practice of coordinated activities to ensure that the company stays within internally and externally mandated boundaries.

GRC also offers the following benefits deriving from an organizational integrated approach to GRC processes:

• Reduces cost, since redundant activities are identified and streamlined or eliminated;
• Reduces need and cost for reconciling information across the organization;
• Reduces gaps and errors, since the integration creates a holistic system of checks;
• Increases quality of the risk-based information on which strategical and tactical decisions are based;
• Enhances employee motivation as contribution to achieving objectives becomes clear;
• Provides trust results from consistent organizational positions and actions, from oversight through operations;
• Drives agility by a clear definition of who handles what activities in what sequence;
• Improves the effective management of stakeholder expectations;
• Assures that expectations and objectives are met.

A comprehensive Governance, Risk and Compliance solution supports all stages of the GRC lifecycle, allowing you to develop and maintain activities such as strategic planning, risk management, process management, monitoring and control, from the corporate to IT level.

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SoftExpert GRC Suite provides a governance framework to enable effective decision making and behavioral changes. It provides viable and effective implementation of both corporate and IT governance at the organization. SoftExpert GRC Suite allows for organizational alignment at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. At the same time, it automates and manages the most essential processes related to a variety of activities, including setting strategic goals, key performance indicators, risk management, process management, project management, service management, the application of metrics and controls, audits and corrective actions.

The following are some of the main features offered by SoftExpert GRC Suite:

Strategic Planning – Develops the corporate strategy with the support of analysis tools like SWOT and decision matrix, and uses templates to build standard scorecards.

Risk Management – Facilitates risk identification and analysis to guarantee the achievement of organizational objectives and the compliance with policies and regulations.

Initiative Management – Fully integrated Project and Portfolio Management [PPM] Suite that selects, implements and monitors initiatives and projects without requiring third party tools or customized programming.

Process Management – Provides a well-integrated platform for describing, modeling and executing the business processes.

Quality Management – Integrated web-based quality management applications that supports all phases of the PDCA Cycle and addresses the increasing complexity of efficiently and effectively managing quality processes.

Incident and Problem Management – Complete automated handling of incidents, problems and corrective/preventive actions using worldwide renowned methods: PDCA for problem solving, and 5W2H for action planning.

Performance Management – Builds metrics using data from any source, including ERP and CRM systems, spreadsheets, legacy and mainframe data, formulas and user-entered values.

Control and Monitoring – Provides a unified environment for monitoring business process performance in a “drill down” mode. Self-assessments, audits and metrics give the manager a quick overview of the current situation.

Policy and Compliance Management – Stores and maintains regulatory acts, international standards and protocols to protect data confidentiality, prevent unauthorized access to information and guarantee compliance through periodic audits and analyses.

Key Risk Indicators Dashboard - Powerful tool that allows managers to select indicators or strategic elements based on real-time monitoring with different visualization options.

Business Intelligence – Delivers line-of-business reporting and helps business users identify department problems. BI capabilities provide managers with the ability to drill down on data and “slice and dice” from different levels, based on Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) technology.

The concepts and features offered by SoftExpert for Governance, Risk and Compliance meet all the requirements established by international standards and regulations, such as SOX, COSO, COBIT, ISO 20000 (ITIL), ISO 27001, PMBOK and others.

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