Thought Leadership & Blogs

The question I get asked most about by GRC professionals

Written by Anthony Stevens | Sep 28, 2023

I was in a boardroom a few weeks ago with four risk and compliance professionals from a listed financial services business. 

Prior to this meeting, I had met with the Chief Risk Officer to learn more about their business and challenges.  At the time I scribbled some notes. 

Back to the boardroom

After we introduced ourselves, I started confirming the agenda for the meeting and was politely interrupted by John who was sitting at the end of the table. "Excuse me. I've worked at some of the biggest banks in the world, using the likes of Open Pages, ServiceNow, Archer, and tens of others.  If you don't mind, can you cut to the chase and just tell me what's different about, 6clicks".  

Boom!  A good question.  And a fair one. 

"John, as you know, there are hundreds of GRC software vendors out there," I said. "You've got plenty of choice". "Dead right", John nodded, "And so..." he egged on.

"Okay, well here's the thing... you know, GRC software, pretty much comes down to this", and I presented the slide below.  

John and everyone else nodded. But they were far from convinced at this point.

"But the problem with traditional GRC software is that the users all end up in the same system because the software was designed that way". "Everyone ends up battling in the system with different needs and expectations." I'm presenting the slide below.  

I continued: "In reality though, most businesses look something like this...  areas of the company have different needs and requirements, and to operate efficiently, people need their own context".  

"And sure, traditional GRC software vendors have a solution - but it's all IT babble, and results in tones of configuration, customization and long implementation times."

"We designed 6clicks to address this need and gap in the market".

Getting to the answer

The state of the market was clear, so I jumped ahead to this slide.

This is where the penny dropped.

I went on to describe that 6clicks was designed to support multiple use cases and is easy to deploy and use. John jumped back in, "That sounds good, but how?" 

The how

The opportunity had presented itself. I had set the scene and was now poised to answer his initial question head-on.  This was the point to explain what makes us different in no uncertain terms. 

"It's called multi-tenancy. But not for us, for you".  "You can accept your business is federated. No one has the same needs, everyone is different and not everyone wants to play in the same sandpit".  "It's the reality of just about every business and the reasons can be subtle or bleedingly obvious like the country they are in, the regulations they need to comply with, or the nature of their operations".  

"Hundreds of customers around the world trust this approach from Fortune 50 to small advisory and managed services providers".  I now presented this slide to illustrate how it works.  

John and the rest of the team were glued to the screen. 

I presented this final slide.

 

Finishing up

Suffice to say, the rest of the meeting with John and the team went well.  The product demo (hit the mark and we agreed next steps. 

I left the meeting room and found a barrister in the lobby of their building for a cup of coffee. A few things were clear:

  • Risk and compliance professionals need a better, new way to overcome struggles with deployment and ROI;
  • Within every business, there's a diverse set of needs - a single system makes addressing these needs very hard; and
  • The market is swamped with GRC software that's pretty much the same, so buyers are looking for a different approach that's technologically advanced to deliver better outcomes.

Thanks for reading this story.  If you would like to view a full copy of the presentation, please connect with me on LinkedIn here and I'll send you a copy.  And if you'd like to arrange a demonstration of our platform, please schedule a demo with us here.