The usability of a GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) system directly impacts the quality and comprehensiveness of the information an organisation receives to support its decision-making. When GRC software is designed to be intuitive and ease the daily work of employees, risk management naturally becomes an integral part of the entire organisation’s everyday routine.
In a recent expert conversation hosted by Granite, we explored a significant update to the Granite software. At its core, the goal is to transform extensive GRC frameworks into tools that are easy to understand, simple to maintain, and genuinely supportive of decision-making. Granite’s Chief Commercial Officer, Janne Viljamaa, and GRC Consultant, Jukka Mäkitalo, shared the strategic background and practical solutions behind the update during the webinar.
This article provides an in-depth look at why risk management software must evolve, how user interface design directly affects data quality, and what benefits a unified GRC platform offers to employees, administrators, and executive management.
Why is Granite Updating? A Changing Operating Environment and Increased Regulation Drove the Overhaul
Organisations should never update software systems purely for cosmetic reasons. Janne Viljamaa emphasises that a massive shift in the operating environment and a growing regulatory burden drive Granite’s renewal. New regulations and requirements increasingly embed a demand for a risk-based approach, which means organisations must be able to identify the dependencies between different elements.
Consequently, the volume of data that organisations must handle grows exponentially. However, the problem is rarely a lack of data. Viljamaa aptly summarises the core challenge:
“The problem isn’t a lack of information. We have a massive amount of data, but it might be scattered across the organisation in different silos, different systems, and with different people.”
The ultimate goal of the update is to bring this siloed information onto a single platform and turn it into a tool for strategic management. The aim is to involve the entire organisation in GRC work: risk management must not be an isolated system that a few experts run, but a genuinely integrated part of all organisational levels where risks and deviations actually occur.
How Do Granite’s New Features Streamline Usability and Improve Data Quality?
Traditionally, one of the biggest bottlenecks in risk management has been the clunkiness of data collection. If a system is complex, employees fail to log their observations, or experts become frustrated searching for information.
Jukka Mäkitalo highlights the importance of user-friendliness:
“All usage related to the system, right from the grassroots level where someone logs a safety observation, should be so easy that you don’t even have to think about it.”
Practical examples of better risk management using Granite’s new platform:
Example 1: Contextual understanding directly from the risk map. Previously, viewing individual risks on a risk map required multiple clicks and switching between views. Even though the information was accessible, users could not access it optimally. In the updated version, a user can simply click on a probability box in the risk matrix, see the associated risks as a list, and open an individual risk directly in the same view. This makes risk analysis fast and helps users quickly grasp which risks fall into a specific section of the risk map.
Example 2: Side-by-side working. When managing complex GRC frameworks, things are inherently interconnected. In the new Granite, a user can open a risk on the left side of the screen while simultaneously viewing or editing an associated task or control on the right side. This eliminates the need for back-and-forth navigation, speeds up transitions between different risks and their related tasks, and significantly accelerates expert work.
Example 3: Lowering the barrier to data entry. Users can now add a new risk directly via the ‘Add form’ button from any tool view, without first needing to navigate to the correct organisational unit. This means users can log a risk immediately as the need arises during daily tasks, significantly speeding up processes like risk update cycles.
Usability equates to data quality, and even small improvements can have a profound impact. The smoother data entry is, the higher the quality of the data that users input into the system. Viljamaa notes a familiar industry truism: “We all know that it’s garbage in, garbage out.” Poor quality data produces poor quality analyses when information is incomplete. When the system guides the user visually—for instance, with new, highly effective filters above tables, intuitive sectioning of long forms, and fast navigation—the error rate drops. Consequently, users shift their focus from searching for information to managing risks.
What Are the Benefits of the GRC System Update for Different Stakeholders?
An impactful GRC system serves every level of an organisation in a different way. Granite designed the update to accommodate these diverse needs.
Benefits for employees and users: For the everyday employee, clarity is key. On the new homepage, employees immediately see their personal responsibilities and tasks, while the interface highlights upcoming or overdue tasks much better than before. This reinforces ownership. If an employee is responsible for a corrective measure following a deviation report, they will find the task directly on their homepage, can mark it as done, and the system updates management reports in real time.
Benefits for GRC administrators and experts: For experts, the scalability and efficiency of the system are paramount. Moving between tools (such as ERM and compliance) is now instantaneous via the new left-hand menu. Crucially for administrators, what does not change is also important: the organisation’s existing data, processes, access rights, and, for example, Power BI API integrations remain completely unchanged. Therefore, usage continues as before following the update, but saving time and yielding better results.
Benefits for management and decision-makers: GRC matters often land on executive management’s desk in the form of summaries and situational overviews. Because the new user interface encourages the entire organisation to actively participate, management receives more up-to-date and comprehensive data to support their decision-making. Management can quickly see, for example, which risks have changed, which controls are faltering, or which areas require immediate executive input. The situational picture remains current, allowing management to target resources far more effectively where they matter most.
Furthermore, the integrated Granite AI (artificial intelligence) will now be more actively present on the right-hand side of the views. In the future, this will enable fast text analytics of massive risk data sets and the identification of common patterns—a capability that elevates management reporting to an entirely new level.