GRC Value: It’s More Than Just ROI
A Real Conversation About Real GRC Value
It was a London evening last week, and I found myself in Mayfair sharing Indian food with a respected friend in risk management, Stefan. He’s the Head of Risk and Governance for a well-known UK-based retail organization, a sharp thinker with years of risk management experience. We met up to catch up, decompress, and compare notes on what we’ve been seeing in the world of governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC).
Midway through our conversation — just after the starters and naan arrived — he glanced at his phone and raised an eyebrow. “Another one,” he said. A vendor had messaged him directly, promoting their GRC platform. The message read like many do: bold efficiency claims. “Save 75% in time spent on risk assessments and reporting! Cut your audit prep time in half!”
My friend smiled, unimpressed. “Nobody bought a GRC tool because it makes the risk guy’s job easier, it is not a benefit that will make people buy” he responds. “Show me how this reduces risk to my corporate objectives, that is what interests me.”
That one sentence stuck with me. It was a masterclass in clarity — an executive not seduced by buzzwords or dashboards, but focused on outcomes. And it reminded me just how off-track the GRC technology conversation can become when it centers solely on process automation and productivity metrics.
The truth is that nobody buys a GRC tool just to make the risk guy’s job easier. GRC is not about efficiency for its own sake. It is about enabling the organization to reliably achieve its objectives, navigate uncertainty, and protect its integrity. Yes, time savings are useful — but if those time savings do not translate into improved decisions, reduced exposure, and stronger organizational performance, then the platform may be automating the wrong thing faster and perpetuating poor risk management.
GRC: What You Do, Not What You Buy
Let’s be clear: GRC is not a piece of software. GRC is a capability (read the OCEG GRC Capability Model) — an integrated set of practices across the enterprise that support governance (setting and achieving objectives), risk management (addressing uncertainty to objectives), and compliance (acting with integrity as we pursue objectives). It includes strategy and structure, culture and behavior, policies and processes, roles and responsibilities. Technology plays a role — but it is an enabler, not GRC itself.
No one buys GRC. And every organization does GRC, whether they call it GRC or something else. The question is how can we make GRC (or whatever you call it in your organization) more efficient, effective, resilient, and agile. That is where technology does have a role. And we all use technology for GRC, even if you are stuck in the Stone Age with stone tablets and chisels, that is technology.
This distinction matters because too many organizations approach GRC as a systems implementation project instead of a business discipline. They start with tool selection rather than problem identification. Too often focused on compliance and not business objectives, they aim to “get compliant” without asking what compliance means in the context of their business objectives. They automate controls but fail to evaluate whether those controls are reducing risk in a meaningful way.
A well-implemented GRC technology solution can be transformative — but only when it supports the broader capability. And that capability must deliver value in more than one dimension.
The Four Dimensions of GRC Value
The framework I have developed to evaluate the business value of GRC investments and build business cases — whether in technology, process design, or organizational structure — is grounded in four core value dimensions: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Resilience, and Agility. Each of these relates directly to the underlying GRC mission and definition: to reliably achieve objectives (governance), address uncertainty (risk management), and act with integrity (compliance).
Let’s explore these four dimensions with a narrative lens—and unpack what they look like in practice . . .
1 – Efficiency: The Beginning, Not the End
Efficiency is the most commonly touted benefit in GRC solution pitches. And for good reason: organizations waste enormous amounts of time managing risk, controls, and compliance through fragmented, manual, spreadsheet and email-driven processes or in silos of non-integrated solutions. These inefficiencies are costly—not only in terms of personnel hours but in opportunity cost and risk of error.
Consider a global consumer goods company that had five separate teams managing overlapping third-party risk processes in different areas of the business. Each team had its own intake forms, risk assessment templates, and reporting structure. The result was redundant work, inconsistent decisions, and no centralized view of supplier risk exposure. After deploying a GRC platform to unify and automate the process, they reduced administrative effort by 80%, eliminated duplicative vendor reviews, and created a single source of truth that dramatically improved efficiency across procurement, legal/compliance, privacy, and IT security.
But here’s the key: those time savings were not the business case — they were the enabler. The real value came in improved decision-making and better vendor oversight, not faster form completion. So efficiency is nice, we like ROI, but there is much more to GRC value.
Efficiency matters. But it’s only the first step.
Efficient GRC is about doing things right. But effective GRC is about doing the right things.
2 – Effectiveness: Reducing Actual Risk Exposure
This is the dimension that too often gets ignored, but is the most critical. Is there a measurable, quantifiable reduction in risk exposure to the organizations objectives and operations?
In GRC, effectiveness means your efforts are actually lowering risk exposure and enabling the organization to reliably achieve objectives amid uncertainty. Not perceived risk. Not checkbox risk. But real, measurable risk exposure (uncertainty) to strategic, financial, and operational objectives.
I’ve worked with organizations that had risk registers and beautifully documented control libraries — yet they suffered repeated incidents, regulatory scrutiny, and failed to show risk reduction and enable the business to manage uncertainty to objectives. Why? Because they had no way of linking controls to outcomes, or risk scoring to business objectives. Their GRC efforts were comprehensive but not calibrated. They were tracking noise instead of reducing signal.
Contrast that with a financial services firm that focused their GRC program on risk-weighted investment in controls. They used a platform not just to document risks, but to correlate them with control performance, incident frequency, audit findings, and business objectives. This allowed them to:
- Identify areas of over-control where compliance burden could be reduced
- Justify increased investment in high-risk areas with weak mitigation
- Demonstrate to the board a clear line from GRC activities to business outcomes and objectives
Effectiveness here wasn’t about how fast they completed assessments. It was about the confidence that risks were being managed within tolerance — and being able to prove it.
If you cannot demonstrate that your GRC program is measurably reducing risk to your objectives, then you are not being effective — just active, perhaps like a hamster on a wheel not truly getting anywhere.
3 – Resilience: Containing the Impact, Not Just Recording It
Resilience is not just about disaster recovery plans or business continuity documentation. Resilience in GRC means the organization can detect, contain, and recover from disruptions and exposures before they cascade into full-blown crises.
Consider a manufacturer who experienced a major supplier cyber incident that exposed them to scrutiny and lost production time. Post-incident analysis revealed that the risk was known — but siloed. IT had flagged it as a concern, but procurement and compliance were unaware. No one had centralized visibility or accountability.
Following that incident, they implemented a GRC solution with integrated third-party monitoring, real-time alerts, and automated risk escalation pathways. The next time a similar issue emerged — with a different vendor — it was flagged, triaged, and mitigated before causing any operational impact.
That is what resilience looks like: not the absence of disruption, but the ability to see it early, contain it quickly, and recover with confidence.
Resilience is what keeps a compliance issue from becoming a scandal. A system failure from becoming a shutdown. A risk exposure from becoming a crisis.
4 – Agility: Steering Through Uncertainty
Finally, we come to agility — the often-overlooked value of GRC in helping organizations not just survive but thrive through change. This is where the greatest value of GRC is, if an organization is mature enough to achieve it and has the vision to achieve it.
The world doesn’t wait for risk teams to catch up. New regulations, emerging technologies, geopolitical shifts, environmental crises, and social expectations all create an environment where yesterday’s risks and controls are insufficient for today’s realities. The question is: Can your GRC program keep up? Are you navigating the road ahead of the organization or driving fixated on the rearview mirror?
A digital services company undergoing rapid expansion into Southeast Asia and the Middle East found itself navigating a complex mix of regulatory expectations, cultural norms, and emerging risks (e.g., geo-political, operational, financial). As they pursued strategic objectives tied to regional market growth, leadership quickly recognized that their ability to reliably achieve those objectives was threatened by fragmented risk management practices. Without a unified GRC framework, it was difficult to anticipate and adapt to jurisdictional differences or maintain consistent oversight. By implementing a GRC solution aligned with business strategy and objectives, they gained forward-looking visibility into regulatory obligations, third-party exposures, and operational dependencies across regions. This allowed the organization to proactively chart a course, scaling risk management practices in parallel with their expansion — ensuring that growth was not only fast, but sustainable and governed with integrity.
Agility meant that they could enter new markets with confidence, see the road ahead of them, that is the objectives and the obstacles appearing in the way of achieving those objectives in their growth strategy — without slowing down business.
A digital twin adds significant value to agility by providing a dynamic, real-time mirror of the organization’s processes, risks, and controls. This allows leaders to simulate potential scenarios, visualize the ripple effects of change, and make informed decisions before disruptions occur. With a digital twin, GRC becomes forward-looking — helping the organization see around corners and adjust proactively to stay aligned with strategic objectives.
GRC should not be the handbrake. It should be the navigation system — helping the business steer safely through uncertainty toward its objectives.
The Conclusion: Lead with Impact
Efficiency is part of GRC value — but it’s only a part of the story. Done right, the value of efficiency/ROI is only a small fragment of the value of GRC when done correctly in the right context of the organizations objectives.
The strongest business cases I see are the ones that anchor GRC in strategic outcomes:
- Reduced risk exposure to what matters most in context of objectives
- Informed investment in the right controls to reliably achieve objectives
- Fewer incidents with faster response and recovery that could expose objectives
- Smarter navigation through a changing business landscape as it strives to achieve objectives
So let me say it again—for solution providers, practitioners, and executive sponsors alike:
Stop selling GRC as time savings. Start showing how it enables the business to achieve objectives, adapt to change and uncertainty, and act with integrity in an uncertain world.
Because that’s not just GRC. That’s good business.