Manual governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) processes are notorious for being slow, time-consuming and prone to human error. These GRC inefficiencies significantly hinder your team’s overall organizational agility. Implementing a GRC automation suite offers a powerful solution, enabling your team to maximize productivity, accelerate key processes and significantly increase visibility across your compliance landscape, effectively transforming your risk and compliance efforts.
But what does GRC automation look like in practice? How can you leverage technology to transform your GRC operations?
3 Examples of GRC Automation
In this article, we’ll explore three practical GRC automation examples put to the test by PROS, a leading provider of AI-powered SaaS pricing, CPQ, revenue management and digital offer marketing solutions. These real-world GRC use cases demonstrate how organizations are successfully simplifying complex regulatory compliance and audits, strengthening risk management and improving governance processes through advanced automation.
Example 1: Using GRC Automation to Reduce Regulatory Compliance Complexity
For many organizations, navigating the intricate web of compliance regulations is a monumental task, especially with the consistent introduction of changed or new regulations. Depending on your industry and operational footprint, you could face hundreds of requirements—federal, state, local and industry-specific. Managing these GRC processes manually creates a significant burden for your GRC team, increasing the risk of missed deadlines or non-compliance due to human error.
Leading GRC teams are tackling this challenge by using compliance automation. Some have created dedicated applications within their GRC platform to centralize all their compliance processes, requirements and action items in one accessible place, creating intuitive compliance interactions.
This type of GRC application can organize requirements by major compliance standards such as HIPAA, GDPR and CCPA. Each standard can have its own dedicated dashboard, providing your GRC team with an immediate, at-a-glance overview of your company’s current compliance posture or compliance status for that regulation. These dashboards can include automated alerts for upcoming deadlines, visualize progress towards meeting key mandates and highlight outstanding tasks.
Integrating features for Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), Transfer Impact Assessments (TIAs), data subject requests and regulatory documentation tabs makes it easy for staff to quickly locate the information needed to initiate, advance and complete compliance initiatives. Furthermore, a built-in knowledge base or Q&A section allows the GRC team to proactively address common questions from employees across the company, like “What are the differences between GDPR and CCPA?”, ensuring consistent understanding and compliance.
Automating workflows within the app can streamline compliance efforts further. Action items can be automatically assigned to employees via email with secure links for task completion. Employees can easily upload supporting documentation and add notes directly within the system. Automated email reminders help keep compliance workflows on track, and the GRC team can use the application to effectively track potential violations and manage remediation efforts, significantly reducing manual follow-up.
Example 2: Strengthening Employee Mobility Risk Management With GRC Automation
The shift towards remote and global work has introduced new complexities in managing employee mobility risk. Assessing the risk associated with employees working from diverse locations, ensuring their health and safety and navigating local compliance and legal requirements can be challenging and time-consuming when handled manually.
To address this, some organizations have implemented risk management automation solutions. They’ve set up programs to assess and track the risk for each employee location, incorporating real-time monitoring features. The goal is not only to manage risk but also to provide employees with necessary health advice and ensure company approvals align with risk tolerance.
One innovative approach involves creating a custom “Countries” application. This app allows the GRC team to assign high, medium or low-risk ratings based on various risk types, including security, compliance, and privacy, for different nations. Basic overviews of employment laws and highlights of country-specific copyright and intellectual property (IP) rules are included, providing crucial context.
Adding a collaborative notes section allows employees to contribute their own information, creating a shared knowledge base accessible to all authorized users. As the GRC team conducts ongoing research, they can add additional talking points and answer employee questions directly within the country’s record, providing richer context.
Each record serves as a centralized point for documenting location-based approval decisions, adding crucial context. For instance, the GRC team can justify authorizing remote work from a high-risk location by noting mitigating factors, such as the employee working from a secure military base or utilizing a secure VPN to safeguard data.
While the urgency highlighted by the pandemic may have lessened, this type of custom application remains invaluable for multinational companies or those with employees who travel frequently. It helps organizations and individuals stay informed about potential risks (like political instability or natural disasters via State Department warnings), secure data while traveling and proactively reduce risk exposure. This is a prime example of how GRC automation enhances operational resilience.
Example 3: Improving PCI 4.0 Governance and Beyond With GRC Automation
Maintaining robust governance processes is essential, especially with evolving standards like PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) v4.0. This standard, which went into effect in 2024, introduced new requirements for organizations processing credit and debit card payments, requiring a deeper level of governance and control. Ensuring every business unit understands and fulfills its specific responsibilities for such standards is a significant challenge with manual processes.
To improve governance automation, one client tackled this by leveraging their GRC platform to build a custom app around their asset inventory. The objective was to create a detailed inventory of assets involved in payment processing, documenting associated risks, threats, and recommended mitigation strategies in detail. This application, aptly named “Targeted Risk Analysis,” provides a structured approach to a critical governance requirement.
Using a no-code platform, the GRC team found it straightforward to set up the app and populate it with contextual information for each analysis. This not only helped the company meet PCI 4.0 requirements but also established a defined, repeatable structure for risk analysis. The beauty of this approach is its adaptability; the company easily customized this framework for other regulatory compliance mandates like NIST 800-53, ISO, and SOX, demonstrating the flexibility of digital transformation in GRC. They even extended the app’s use case to analyze the risk exposure associated with policy changes, like switching password requirements.
Automation features within the platform streamline the workflow. When someone completes their tasks for a risk analysis, the system can automatically send email notifications with time and date stamps to relevant stakeholders, providing transparency and an audit trail. The GRC team can schedule annual reviews within the platform to easily incorporate new or updated requirements, such as subsequent versions of PCI DSS. This kind of GRC automation ensures that your company maintains continuous compliance and strong governance even as the regulatory landscape constantly shifts and evolves.
Key Benefits of GRC Automation
Implementing GRC automation can transform how your organization manages governance, risk and compliance. By streamlining manual processes and centralizing information, teams can focus on strategic work rather than repetitive tasks.
- Increased Efficiency and Productivity: Automates repetitive tasks like evidence collection, reporting and audits, freeing teams for strategic work.
- Enhanced Accuracy and Reduced Human Error: Minimizes manual data entry and process management to reduce inaccuracies.
- Faster Decision-Making: Provides real-time insights and automated alerts for quicker responses to potential threats.
- Improved Risk Management: Consolidates risk data from diverse sources for a holistic view and proactive mitigation.
- Adaptability to Regulatory Changes: Efficiently maps controls and reduces duplication across frameworks like SOX and GDPR.
- Comprehensive Audit Trails: Generates detailed, tamper-proof records essential for audits and demonstrating control effectiveness.
- Cost Savings: Reduces operational and audit expenses through improved efficiency.
- Scalability: Scales compliance programs alongside business growth and evolving regulatory complexity.
- Centralized Data Management and Collaboration: Offers a unified platform for all GRC data, fostering cross-team collaboration.
By leveraging GRC automation, organizations can not only maintain compliance more effectively but also gain greater visibility, agility and confidence in their governance and risk management processes.
Challenges of GRC Automation
Implementing GRC automation can bring substantial benefits, but organizations often face challenges that must be addressed to maximize effectiveness. Understanding these obstacles upfront helps teams plan, mitigate risks and ensure successful adoption.
- Cost and Investment: Significant upfront and ongoing resources are required for system implementation and maintenance.
- Staffing and Expertise: Adequate trained personnel are essential to configure and manage GRC platforms effectively.
- Integration Complexities: Seamless integration with existing systems can be difficult and may require strong change management.
- Organizational Silos: Cross-department collaboration is critical to avoid fragmentation of GRC efforts.
- Thorough Documentation: Mapping and rationalizing current processes is crucial before automation to avoid reinforcing inefficiencies.
- Leadership Support: Executive buy-in is vital for resourcing and sustaining GRC initiatives.
- Human-in-the-Loop Necessity: Automation assists but does not replace human strategic oversight and risk assessment.
- Building Trust in Data and Processes: Establishing confidence in automated workflows is necessary to ensure adoption and effectiveness.
By proactively addressing these challenges, organizations can improve adoption, maximize the value of GRC automation and ensure that systems deliver reliable, actionable insights.
Key Technologies and Components
GRC automation is powered by dedicated platforms or software tools that often integrate advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). These platforms feature automated control testing schedules, evidence capture, approval workflows, dashboards, alerts and integrations with other organizational systems like AWS and Jira.
Transform Your GRC Strategy with Automation
Whether you’re struggling with the volume of compliance requirements, managing global risks, or keeping pace with evolving standards, there’s likely a GRC process within your organization that could benefit significantly from automation through a dedicated GRC platform. Exploring how a versatile GRC platform can be configured to build custom applications tailored to your specific challenges is the first step towards a more efficient, effective, and resilient GRC function.
Ready to discover more ways GRC automation, including continuous monitoring, can transform your company’s GRC strategy? We’re ready to discuss when you are.
