No one knows what’s next when it comes to IT. There’s no doubt that whatever the IT future holds it will be out of this world, possibly literally. Forget Moore’s law, I still believe Arthur C. Clarke summed things up the best when he said – “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. How true is that in the 21st century! Today, even I sometimes feel ignorant enough to agree with Leigh Brackett and think there’s IT Witchcraft about…
When contending with rather rampant trends and exponential evolutions in IT, organizations are challenged with harnessing available technologies to achieve strategic business objectives on a sustainable basis. We’re in the age of social integration, mobility, Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Bring Your Own pretty much everything - from devices, to apps, to even your own cloud! The opportunities that technologies such as these provide to the enterprise are endless, and leveraging IT is essential to building competitive advantage in any contemporary market place. And businesses are always looking for new ways to stay ahead of the proverbial pack.
But just as the pressure on organizations to perform has never been greater, so too have the demands to conform never been higher. Good governance has emerged as more than just a non-negotiable, it’s a critical success factor, proving that doing the right things really does pay dividends. And it’s not a case of either/or: “Well let’s perform this quarter” and forget to conform, or “All we need to do is conform this quarter” and forget about performing. Enterprises have to do both, the consequences of choosing only one or the other are dire either way. Blow it out of the park in performance only to then get slapped with a hefty penalty for failing to conform, and it could be tickets for your business. Conform only, at all costs, and don’t perform, and your enterprise may take a hit in the marketplace that it can simply never recover from.
Risks for organizations today, old and new, small and large, local or global, are everywhere. And with IT ingrained into the operation of (almost) every enterprise, the importance and dependence on IT for the business is paramount. Take any business you know, take their IT capability out of the business and see what risk that poses to the ability of that organization to operate and ultimately survive. A few decades ago it was typically in the context of an Economics discussion that one would hear “The higher the risk, the higher the return”. I can tell you now that as information technologies continue to proliferate and pervade inside and outside of the organization, that you’re more likely to hear an IT discussion around what risks to take and how best to manage them.
When it comes to risk, one of the significant risks facing enterprises since the new millennium is compliance. Comply or die, you’ve probably heard that bandied about. You may think it’s a bit of alarmist talk, but it’s really not a million miles away from the truth. The reality of the matter is that organizations, and many of them, have ceased to exist completely or in one way, shape, form or another – because they failed to comply. Ironically, many of them didn’t even know they were doing the wrong things or not doing the right things, because finding governance in the organization (never mind good governance) was like finding a needle in a haystack. And they didn’t even see it coming. So much for an effective risk management system…
In the contemporary age of IT, organizations are looking for a practical solution that will help them meet the needs and demands placed on them for governance, risk management and compliance as well as enabling them to deliver both peak performance and critical conformance. Great governance by itself is not enough, supreme Risk Management by itself is not enough, perfect compliance by itself is not enough. In the 21st century, enterprises need more than just ‘enough’, they need it all. Step up IT GRC, and with it a solution that brings it all together.
By integrating the essential Enterprise disciplines of governance, risk and compliance, IT GRC unifies the organization to take advantage of the dynamic synergies this creates whilst doing the right things, and doing them effectively. But more than that, IT GRC empowers the Enterprise to achieve performance and conformance goals, giving your business the upper hand today, tomorrow and the day after that. And in an exponentially competitive market place where it’s as much about not getting caught out as it is about getting ahead, having that edge may be the only thing that sets you apart from the business next door. The global stage is set, the only question is, do you have that something extra in your enterprise - IT GRC, giving you that “Mance” factor! I know it gets my vote every time…