Governance, regulation & compliance: The art of effective business

Many organisations are on a journey with their governance, with the intended direction of travel being towards more efficient and effective management of business opportunities and risks. The impetus for change is often a high profile incident of non-compliance, or evolving legal requirements. Lack of attention to these can impact corporate and personal reputations, lead to fines and cause loss of revenue.

However, change is also being driven by an increasing recognition of the wider business benefits of good governance.  According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, an integrated approach to governance, regulation and compliance (GRC) can enhance reputational value (by 23%), employee retention value (by 10%) and increase revenue (by 8%).

What happens if this issue remains unaddressed?

• Relevant data can get locked in functional silos, rather than being linked to allow preventative action to be taken.
• The wider business benefits of GRC, such as cost reduction, improved business performance and effective delivery of strategic initiatives are also not realised.
• Adverse events are more likely to occur.

How can we help solve this issue?

The Art of Effective Business is to have a single robust GRC framework.  Our experience has shown that management can exercise more effective control over a business in three ways:

• Culture and values – which establish an individual’s appropriate personal behaviour, set by the “tone at the top” and a code of conduct
• Management systems – providing guidance on how tasks should be achieved, and the process and technology to achieve them
• Oversight – ensuring the right people are asked to do the right tasks, they have sufficient resource to support them, and are properly supervised

By integrating these three areas more effectively organisations can realise strategic opportunity, manage risk proactively; and act decisively if things go wrong.