When senior management announces that your business will being going through a large scale IT implementation it is normally as welcomed as a trip to the dentist. Sure, you may need it; it’s necessary for your short and long term benefit, it’ll save you money later and it’s probably not going to be a comfortable experience. This is especially true when going through not only an IT Implementation, but one that is supposed to identify and solve risk and control issues throughout your entire business. Yes, I’m talking about Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC).
This feeling of anxiety has been initially felt with many of my previous customers during an implementation of SAP BusinessObjects GRC. So I had to quickly dispel some of the myths; here are my top four.
- This will take too many business resources
Although business resources are the key when getting to the root cause of compliance issues that doesn’t mean you need the whole organization to be involved. Simple due diligence in identifying who key stake holders are and which segment of business they belong to in preparation of your SAP GRC implementation will ensure business resources are only involved in relevant topics and decisions making sessions. No need talking to ten people within a department if you needed to talk to one business process owner.
- This will massively disrupt business operations
The whole purpose of SAP BusinessObjects GRC is to automate and streamline many cumbersome processes, such as system access and audit activities. There should be absolutely no negative impact to productivity. Any changes to business processes that need to occur through the findings of a GRC implementation should only increase efficiency.
- This solution is difficult to incorporate into my current SAP landscape
Given advancements in the new release, SAP BusinessObjects GRC 10.0, incorporation of this tool into your current SAP landscape is virtually painless. All of the solutions are now written in ABAP, SAP’s standard programming language, and leveraging SAP’s standard workflow engine; thus making SAP GRC 10.0 very versatile, customizable and flexible when integrating into your current landscape. All of the capabilities are packaged together
- Once a GRC Implementation starts, it never ends
While true that the concept of GRC is something that will forever live throughout your organization, implementing the software solution shouldn’t. Just like any other project, proper planning, alignment of resources and most importantly solidly defining your goals and expectations will ensure a timely implementation.
Ask yourself, do these points sound fimiliar? If you are a customer, did you run into these scenarios?
