Why Google and Microsoft Still Dominate the Back Office

Google and Microsoft remain the most refined and well-known software vendors largely due to tools they provide such as Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Gmail. Many companies and organizations use these tools to compile data and help govern the business. Furthermore, those within GRC sound like a broken record while discussing the inconvenient and inaccurate nature of these processes. However, the flawed and faulty aspects within these processes cannot be stated enough. Especially if these organizations manage their GRC processes as if they’re stuck in a 1990s throwback, it is important to dissect and harp on the flaws.

Google and Microsoft are very useful for many things, most people use them on a daily basis and it is hard to imagine college students surviving without them. But it should be noted that they are inadequate for processing GRC data. A study done by a bank discovered 80% of their GRC related staff time was spent performing tasks that the tools from google and microsoft were unable to even though they were meant to do them. A different firm found that 200 employee hours were spent working on one report for the board. The number of documents it took for the report’s compilation led to this problem. There was another bank that could not pass their next regulatory exam with Google and Microsoft tools. The record of activities performed did not appear presentable.

Managing GRC information, when performed by processes that are more likely to have malfunctions and flaws, will more likely result in being ineffective and unusable. The problems of using spreadsheets, documents and emails to manage GRC information can look something like this.

Static There is no way to backtrack the ways something arrived to how it ended up. The lack of an audit trail can make something look completely different than what actually happened.

Inconsistent GRC management suffers greatly from the lack of structure in Microsoft and Google tools. Information is lost, organization is a mess, and results are often ineffective.

Disconnected Compiling a report with data thrown across countless spreadsheets, documents, and emails is not only daunting and time consuming but very likely to result in an incomplete totality.

GRC needs better technology to perform these tasks. Implementing an integrated approach from these organizations helps for different systems and departments to have analyses that can flow into enterprise risk management and uphold the standards of the business. A design is needed to support the operations of the business and the processes of risk management. The organization’s needs with risk management must be met as well as having an insightful overview of the GRC strategies if the company wants to discover a solution.

Governance The proper development of IT Governance is crucial for monitoring, understanding the business,  and the evaluation and compilation of risk management. If the IT governance framework hasn’t been structured in an effective way, organizations are more susceptible to risk exposure. The data’s safety technology’s risk exposure will be in good hands if the organization has developed enough to have secured visibility and evaluative knowledge of the system as a whole.