How can My School Benefit from GRC Technology?

A well-planned governance, risk and compliance (GRC) strategy comes with lots of benefits: improved decision-making, more optimal IT investments, elimination of silos, and reduced fragmentation among departments, to name a few.

The broad GRC areas include finance and audit GRC, IT GRC management and enterprise risk management. 9ine’s GRC software platform supports the area of IT GRC management, with an enhanced focus on the disciplines of data protection and safeguarding in education. With an effective GRC strategy in place, education and learning technologists can accelerate digital transformation and confidently invest and facilitate innovation while demonstrating best practice.

9ine provide free, virtual leadership training in the areas of data protection & security and systems in education. Our latest workshop provides independent, school-specific training, the outputs will provide your school with a clear plan of action for evidencing compliance, and what best practices look like.

What are the challenges solved by a GRC tool?

The common purpose of any GRC tool is to keep an organisation on track. 9ine’s GRC software automates risk and compliance processes for data protection, safeguarding and security and systems in education and empowers school leaders with a common framework that is adaptable to suit global compliance regulations.

IT, data protection and safeguarding leads use the platform to manage projects, engage and collaborate with stakeholders and provide risk analysis to heads of school, governors/board members. GRC increases productivity through automation and streamlined workflows for risk and compliance processes. It helps avoid financial and reputational losses through monitoring. GRC helps the board make better decisions by delivering them better reports, insights, and risk analysis.

Managing risk and compliance is an integral part of any business that operates in a heavily regulated industry like healthcare, finance and education. To truly understand the importance of GRC tools, we need to understand the change that they can bring to a school or organisation. The benefits of using an automated, centralised GRC tool to manage data protection, safeguarding and IT include:

• Increased visibility 
• Reduce silos
• Drive efficiency
• Accurately capture data
• Data driven insights
• Objective decision making
• Manage resources
• Minimise impact
• Prevent incidents
• Real time risk analytics

What does a GRC tool do that a spreadsheet can’t?

The most important differentiation between GRC tools and using spreadsheets for risk and compliance is that GRC tools allow schools to map links between risk and compliance concerns. GRC tools work on a centralised platform which means if new data is entered into the system, it automatically appears in all the documents it should be linked to. For example, if a new Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is generated, it will automatically generate the associated tasks that are required. If new data is entered about a risk, it will automatically be displayed wherever the risk is displayed. This saves time and allows teams to work faster. It also allows the school or organisation to gain a better understanding on the risk and compliance activities associated with data protection, safeguarding and IT across the organisation. Since everything is interconnected, it is easy to grasp the impact one activity has on another process.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mark Orchison is Founder and Managing Director of 9ine. He is an experienced management consultant with expertise in data protection, cyber security, technology, project and programme management in education. Since 2009, Mark has led 9ine in becoming the leading independent K-12 technology and compliance consultancy in the UK. Mark now leads a team of twenty multi-disciplinary and specialist consultants in-house, with a client base expanding across Africa, Middle-East, Russia, India, Asia and the Americas.