Integration can be slow but it's a winning strategy

Fred sees his friend walking up the street with 2 suitcases. As he looks down he sees his friend's incredible watch. "Wow - that watch looks amazing!" says Fred. "Sure is" says his friend. "It tells the right time anywhere in the world, has a calendar, plays all my favourite music, I can activate it with my voice and it has a built in camera, telephone and TV screen..".

"Holy cow! - I have to get one!" says Fred. "By the way, what's in the suitcases?"

"The batteries".

I'm getting old and I heard that joke when watches really did just tell the time. The covergence and integration of economies, trading blocs, technologies, even home and work lives is a dominant theme of the last 30 years.

So it is with organizational processes and none more so than in the areas of Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC). Today, the complexity of global markets and the bewildering speed of social and technological change is giving senior managers plenty of sleepless nights as they wonder how to comprehend the threats and opportunities facing their organizations.

At High Profile Solutions, we have witnessed these changes and the evolution of attitudes to risk management moving slowly from reluctance, to grudging acceptance, to real enthusiasm (in the smartest companies that is).

Underpinning this has to be the convergence and integration of value with objectives with risks with KPIs and with the processes and functions that are responsible. (phew, easy right?)

Of course, it's not easy or fast - that's why there's a picture of a tortoise above. Organizations must be honest about the maturity of their processes right now and the hard work journey it's going to take to achieve real integration.

1FiCS software was conceived and is also constantly evolving to assist companies with this journey. We are passionate about integrating management systems (what do we mean?). Health & Safety, Quality, Process Improvement, ERM? - they all share a common DNA and that's what we are building into our software.

Keep watching this space to follow our journey and maybe learn a bit more about your own....