Grant Thornton Advisory ties GRC partnership with Cerrix
Grant Thornton and software supplier Cerrix have recently launched their partnership and services portfolio for the Dutch Caribbean. According to both firms, the partnership suits the needs of organizations in the Dutch Caribbean with regards to technology enabled process, risk and compliance management. Roy Jansen, Director Advisory at Grant Thornton, reflects on the benefits to clients.
Leaders everywhere face increasing risks for their organizations. These risks come from all directions – regulatory, cybersecurity, financial, operational, litigation – and put every leadership position on the front lines of risk management. But not all risks are created equal. And not all organizations or executives have the same appetite (or tolerance) for these risks.
Organizations need to achieve a robust balance of governance, risk management and compliance (GRC). Siloed approaches to managing GRC mean that both Supervisory and Managing Boards find it difficult to obtain a holistic view of how their organization is managing risk and are challenged obtaining the right information for decision making. Unsurprisingly, Boards and Audit/ Risk/Compliance committees are demanding greater insight into key risks and compliance obligations, how these risks and obligations are being managed, and the depth and breadth of assurance over the key risks the organization faces.
These necessary insights ask for robust and well-working risk management processes. This cannot be achieved by labor intensive data processing activities needed to investigate, assess and present risk, audit and compliance data, but must be part of a streamlined and automated process. With Cerrix’s software platform, this can be achieved. Grant Thornton and Cerrix have combined capabilities to mature risk & control frameworks and processes in organizations.
Implementing a successful GRC program is a gradual process. Organizations that prepare for a GRC solution often have a risk management process in place, though maturity may differ. With the introduction of the CERRIX GRC software, organizations aim for improvement of the organizations’ risk awareness, but also to gain more efficiency in the risk data processing and its data quality. The software enables the pathway for communicating interactively and consistently with all stakeholders.
Governance, risk and compliance
Grant Thornton’s Advisory service line has developed a full spectrum portfolio of services to support organizations with the implementation and management of CERRIX’s GRC software. Providing implementation support, user training and managing the GRC software as a full managed service or by means of co-sourced delivery models side-by-side with risk or compliance managers. With the combined efforts of Grant Thornton and Cerrix organizations realize the following:
- Cost savings after achieved efficiencies in GRC processes, reduction of incidents with stronger risk and controls management;
- A Risk Dashboard which in realtime presents all summarized risk data graphically and structured with filtering and drill down options;
- Flexibility in easy-to-use screens that can be built on top of the CERRIX-database with userconfigured workflows;
- Managers have integrated insight in their risk domain which contributes to organization wide risk management awareness and adoption;
- A pro-active system with automatic alerts which are sent when due dates for actions are becoming overdue or risk appetite breaches occur.