Using integrated technology to improve governance, reduce business risks

A unified approach to governance, risk and compliance using integrated technology has been found to help organisations quickly maximise strategic and operational performance, cost-effectively manage regulations and policies and proactively reduce business risks.

Salman Akorede, Governance, Risks and Compliance (GRC) pre-sales consultant, SAP West Africa region, recently describes governance as the activities that ensure business is done according to established standards and goals. Akorede says “risk involves strategically creating value and protecting value. Compliance refers to the controls in place to ensure compliance with laws, regulations and directives affecting businesses.”

Organisations are confronted with an increasing need to respond to their various stakeholders – government and regulatory agencies, and react to changes in their internal operational environments – mergers and acquisitions, processes, business relationships, strategy, information technology, financial reporting requirements and employees as well as changes in their external environments – economic uncertainties, geo-political, environmental, societal, industry and market forces, he says.

According to him, this is an extremely complex environment and all these changes translate into risks and the critical need to make appropriate responses, with changes to business policies and procedures in a timely and accurate manner by using current and reliable information.

Coming home to Nigeria, Akorede says just as elsewhere in the world, governmental regulations and compliance are increasing. “Everyday, there are more organisational and industry risks that have to be managed together with other operational risks. These governance, risks and compliance challenges are often managed at department, operational, functional or role levels rather than through an integrated and coordinated approach as offered by a GRC technology solution,” he says.

He explains that managing risk and compliance in silos as described above is complex, confusing and costly, “as a result of fractional, disintegrated and disconnected functional business activities, information and data is spread across many people and systems. Organisational practices across the enterprise will therefore be inconsistent. Without an integrated solution, organisational practices may also not be in alignment with set missions, goals and objectives.”

In response to the challenge of managing the multitude of risks, Akorede explains that forward thinking organisations are embracing integrated Governance, Risks and Compliance (GRC) technology initiatives to prevent unplanned financial losses and erosion of shareholders’ wealth.

He says rather than using a siloed view when it comes to these solutions, but a unified approach using integrated technology, organisations can quickly maximise strategic and operational performance, cost-effectively manage regulations and policies and proactively mitigate business risks.

He then highlights how SAP solutions for GRC help companies to proactively balance risks and opportunity, including access control, process control, risk management, audit management, fraud management and global trade services in an integrated manner on a single harmonised IT platform. “Ultimately, SAP’s goal is to enable organisations of all sizes to pinpoint all relevant risks and potential compliance issues to enable them to make optimal decisions in light of both the opportunity ahead and the related risks,” he says.