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As the regulatory environment tightens resulting from the current financial crisis, it’s no surprise that companies will be looking to do more with less. In the risk management space, companies will begin to leverage their siloed risk and compliance capabilities across functions throughout the enterprise.

With today’s spectacular financial failures, there is increased attention on the BI/Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) sector. One cause of these failures is a siloed approach to risk management which does not allow for an assessment of aggregated risk at the top of the organization. The result is that organizations underestimate or can’t identify the true risk in the business.

In order to gain visibility into risks, executives need a business intelligence (BI) layer on top of their risk and compliance systems that will report on the status of risk and compliance initiatives in different business units across the enterprise. When organizations leverage GRC technology that includes a solid BI front end, GRC can be made relevant for business managers, regardless of the department. BI can then provide information about the status of the organization in such a way that the data then becomes actionable for business managers.

Investment in risk management technology has never been more important for the prevention of catastrophic failures and risks. More companies are beginning to take a programmatic approach to risk management, resulting in steady or increased funding for GRC technology initiatives. This in turn, will dramatically improve their visibility into the risk inherent within the business.

Gordon Burnes is OpenPages’ Vice President of Marketing.