Building a compelling business case for a Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) tool doesn’t have to be an arduous process. In addition to this activity often being the key to getting budget signoff for purchasing new software, it can also be a useful and worthwhile exercise to determine your risk maturity levels, identify quick wins, map your most important requirements and flag any gaps or areas left uncontrolled.
Here’s how you build a Business Case for GRC software that guarantees budget sign-off.
Step 1: Assess your current situation
Before introducing a new GRC tool, evaluating your existing processes is crucial.
- Relying on spreadsheets that resemble a snakes and ladders board game?
- Is crucial information scattered, or worse, undocumented?
- How involved are your C-Suite and wider leadership roles in risk management?
- Looking through email chains the length of a dictionary to find information?
- Or perhaps you’re using a tool that’s impossible or too expensive to evolve as your business grows?
Identifying, explaining and measuring these pain points will highlight the need for a centralised GRC solution and form the basis of your business case .
Quick tips for Step 1
- Speak to people in your wider risk and compliance function: Ask them what their biggest challenge and bugbear is in their day-to-day work and how they’ve seen this affect the business negatively.
- Research fines and penalties: Check what other companies like yours have been fined for non-compliance or regulatory breaches. For example, the FCA keeps a record of any fines issued throughout the year.
Step 2: Spotlight on the challenges
It’s time to dig deeper into these challenges and go beyond how it’s negatively impacting your team and risk culture, by illustrating how it’s putting your business at risk.
- Are inefficiencies leading to wasted time and resources?
- Have there been close calls or actual incidents due to a lack of oversight?
Documenting these challenges will underscore the urgency for a robust GRC tool.
Quick tips for Step 2
- Review any previous audit outcomes or recommendations.
- Tie it back into business challenges: Always tie every central challenge faced by the risk and compliance team into key business challenges.
Step 3: Envision and visualise the benefits
Imagine a world where risk management is streamlined, compliance is a breeze, and audits don't induce anxiety. A GRC tool can transform this vision into reality by enhancing productivity, ensuring transparency and providing a unified platform for all GRC activities.
The key here is tying this back into the pain points we identified in step one, but always returning to the consequences of this for the wider business.
- How much time does your team spend on chasing down missing data? And how does this slow down decision-making across the business?
- How much time do you spend working with clunky and heavy reporting tools? And does the final result leave your leadership team with trustworthy information?
- How much time is needed to prepare and follow up after audits? And are recommendations implemented, or are they forgotten?
- How long does it take someone to log a risk with the current system? And does the length and complexity of this task lead to a significant drop off?
Quick tips for Step 3
- Work with your potential software supplier: They should be able to determine how much time introducing the system will save your team.
- Compare this to your current situation: Comparing how your current situation would compare to a streamlined approach can be a powerful demonstration of how a GRC tool can help future-proof your business.
Step 4: Crunch the numbers
When faced with the choice of investing in a GRC tool, companies often must overcome the ROI hurdle, not to mention the bone-chilling side-eye from the finance team when discussing spend.
Calculate the potential return on investment (ROI) by considering the key factors for your specific business. We’ve seen this include:
- Time saved on audits
- Reduction in compliance violations
- Improved resource allocation
- Enhanced product quality
- More accurate spend forecasting
- Competitive advantage
- More customer trust and loyalty
... and many more benefits.
Pinpointing and highlighting the items that will make the most significant impact for your leadership team and showing how this affects the bottom line for your business is key.
Step 5: Rally the troops
Identify the key stakeholders that will benefit from the GRC tool.
This could include risk managers, compliance officers, auditors, c-suite, broader leadership, and the finance team. Tailor your business case to address their specific needs and demonstrate how the tool will make their lives easier.
Decision makers will likely want to understand how the GRC tool aligns with the organisation's strategic goals. Here are some examples of FAQs we see from stakeholders:
- What is the purpose of the GRC tool, and how does it support our business objectives?
- How does this tool fit into our overall governance, risk, and compliance strategy?
- What specific problems or pain points does this tool solve?
- What are the tangible and intangible benefits, such as improved compliance or reduced risk?
- What are the security features and certifications of the tool?
- What is the implementation timeline, and what resources are needed?
- How will we measure this tool's return on investment or success?
- How does this tool integrate with our current technology stack?
- What are the risks associated with not implementing this tool?
Step 6: Present with flair
Combine all your findings into a compelling narrative. Highlight the current challenges, the envisioned benefits, and the impressive ROI. A common pitfall GRC professionals often face is speaking primarily in terms they would use and understand, but we'd challenge you to think about your audience first.
Use visuals, anecdotes, and maybe even a dash of humour to keep your audience engaged. Remember, a well-crafted story can be more persuasive than a mountain of data.
Quick tips for Step 6
- Engage trusted storytellers: If you’re lucky enough to have a Marketing and/or Content team, speak to them about crafting a compelling story and visuals around your Business Case.
- Avoid jargon: Don’t assume everyone you’re presenting to knows a lot about governance, risk and compliance. Avoiding acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations and other jargon as far as possible.
- Get your chosen software provider involved: Your software provider of choice should be able to help you craft a compelling Business Case, help you with benchmarking numbers, and provide success stories of similar companies they’ve worked with that you can use as a part of your business case.
Conclusion
Building a business case for a GRC tool doesn't have to be a daunting quest. By following these steps, you'll be well-equipped to champion the cause and lead your organisation toward a future of enhanced governance, risk management, and compliance.
So, gear up, gather your allies, and confidently embark on this transformative journey.