Respected EHS Analyst Predicts GRC Solutions Market to Reach $52 Billion

April 10th, 2008

If you’re still deciding whether to attend EXPO.08, let me refer you to Michael Rasmussen’s new research, in which he says GRC is gathering momentum among organizations as a philosophy of business. In fact, he predicts a $52 billion market for GRC solutions in 2008.

As a business philosophy, GRC is collaborative, requiring contributions from throughout the enterprise. The philosophy is composed of sustainability, consistency, transparency, and especially efficiency — which happen when organizations leverage information and processes across the enterprise.

ESS EXPO.08, which starts Sunday, will feature several industry experts who will share perspectives on their corporate governance issues or initiatives, and how their organizations are using information technology to address those concerns.

Rasmussen points out, “good governance is built upon diligent risk and compliance management processes. In today’s business environment, ignoring a federated view of GRC results in business processes, partners, employees and systems that behave like leaves blowing in the wind.”
In the past few years, ESS, like Rasmussen, has found that there are several common drivers of GRC in the enterprise:

• Growth of Corporate Social Responsibility.
• Increasing governance demands.
• Rating agencies focused on enterprise risk management.
• Increasing risk profile in a distributed world.
• Connecting performance management to risk management.
• Increasing regulatory compliance profile.
• Impact of the extended enterprise.
• Inefficient, manual and siloed risk and compliance initiatives are ineffective.

Quite a while ago, we realized that silos of information increase, rather than mitigate risk, and we moved to architect our solution as an integrated platform. For that, I have to thank our product development teams and their depth of industry experience. You can almost say they “felt” the wave coming, and like good surfers, they were in position to ride it properly.

Other analysts are noticing how ESS has positioned itself to address market trends. At the recent Gartner GRC conference in Chicago, lead analyst Dan Miklovic provided an EHS industry overview, where he reported, “ESS is one of the few providers to offer a suite of EH&S solutions that closely align with Gartner’s market definition and to offer both hosted and licensed delivery models.” I highly recommend it if you are a Gartner subscriber.

With their leadership, our development teams have brought to market a solution that allows managers to see the big picture, use their resources effectively, reduce unnecessary complexity, and stay nimble and flexible. We operate in such a dynamic business environment (witness how quickly Bear Stearns ceased to exist – in just one weekend!) that simplicity and transparency of information are needed to ensure that businesses meet their corporate governance objectives.

Tags: compliance corporate social responsibility EH&S gartner grc michael rasmussen risk management sustainability

Entry Filed under: Corporate Governance, EHS/HSE Technology