As the economy continues to falter, a question is being echoed every day in executive suites and boardrooms across the country: "How do we reduce costs?"

If your CEO asks, you better have an answer.

In this month's CA Advisor: Governance Edition, I take a look at some key reasons why investing in a GRC solution today can actually help you increase efficiencies and reduce redundancies, ultimately supporting efforts to trim costs. The goal of the article is to offer up some reasons that just might help you come up with a good answer for your CEO.

Here are a few examples of insights from the full article (which you can read here):

• Implementing GRC will help you clarify your organization's objectives and risks. Given current conditions, this scrutiny could very well help you chart a new course of action.




• A GRC solution centralizes information and gives you a 360-degree view of your processes and operations, which will help eliminate redundancy by opening access to information across the enterprise.




• GRC helps you harmonize controls that are common to two or more regulations, greatly simplifying and reducing the costs of your compliance efforts.




• Given the severity of this economic downturn, you need results quickly. The good news is that you don't have to wait for years to see gains from a new GRC implementation. In fact, companies can often start reaping benefits before the solution is fully deployed.

Many companies are looking at areas across the business where they can trim costs. With GRC there is potential for positive impact on the balance sheet given the ability to streamline risk management and compliance processes, to minimize redundancies, and to provide a centralized view.

I encourage you to take a look at this month's issue of CA Advisor: Governance Edition and my article on "GRC for a Down Economy: Sharpen Focus on Mission-critical Objectives" to learn more. If you'd like to subscribe to our monthly Governance newsletter, visit this link (step two of the registration process allows you to subscribe to a range of CA newsletters).