Why specialist Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) software?

Most organisations currently rely on home-grown spreadsheet or paper-based systems for managing governance processes and enterprise risk management. Whilst these tools can do a good job recording information, they inevitably result in static, disjointed systems that are labour-intensive, overly complex, time consuming to use and inconsistently applied. By contrast, Covalent delivers a collaborative, dynamic, integrated GRC system that transforms the whole process to reduce the time, and thus costs, involved. It ensures all parts of the organisation are 'risk aware' and that the risk management process comes to life with real-time risk profiling, alerts to warn owners of changing risk status, regular risk re-assessments and continuous controls monitoring.

Home-grown system weaknesses

Static systems that don't easily support ongoing monitoring processes.
Don't lend themselves to collaborative working, with restricted access for all staff to update or add new risk data.
Difficult to pick out those risks that should be causing greatest concern and respond to changes in real time.
Complicated to track progress of risk mitigation actions.
Costs can become very significant, especially hidden costs consumed in administration time and the significant challenges of reporting results.

Packaged software strengths

Aligns risks and governance with organisational strategic objectives to track progress with achievement.
Streamlines the whole data collection, analysis and presentation process.
Transforms isolated, manual processes into an integrated, dynamic risk management system.
Delivers ongoing process efficiencies, eliminating the duplication of effort that arises in alternative approaches.
Ensures all parts of the organisation are 'risk aware' and actively involved in all four risk lifecycle stages.
Saves time and expense managing the processes required to document, measure, and respond to risks.
Changes focus from gathering information to interpreting what it says and how that impacts your organisation.
Brings governance to life with real-time risk profiling, alerts to warn owners of changing compliance or risk status, regular re-assessments and continuous controls monitoring.