ACL's Spring 2017 Release Launches ACL Into Enterprise Risk Management Market

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Mar 20, 2017, 09:00 ET

GRC technology leader is first to provide aggregated metric of risk and compliance assurance

ORLANDO, Fla., March 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IIA GAM Conference – ACL, a software provider helping governments and the world's largest companies quantify risk, stamp out fraud and optimize performance, today announced its Spring 2017 product release, becoming the first software firm to combine risk assurance and compliance assurance into a single, aggregated metric. This release more aggressively launches the company into the growing enterprise and operational risk management software market.

Illustrate your organizational risk profile with a board-ready heat map.

In addition to building the first visualized data-driven way to manage enterprise risk, ACL has also revolutionized how to map and track regulatory changes to minimize the daily operational burden of compliance. The combination finally provides boards and executive teams with a simple and holistic understanding of their organization's global risk management and compliance posture.

"Risk management is notoriously subjective, and it's time that organizations had a more objective way of understanding and acting on it," commented Dan Zitting, chief product officer at ACL. "We've created a data-driven methodology for continuous assessment that actually enables an informed, quantifiable, real-time approach to enterprise risk management that is mapped to strategic objectives, including aligning KRIs with KPIs."

An objective, quantified approach to enterprise risk management (ERM)

Organizations are demanding a more scientific approach to ERM in order to better evaluate and seize performance opportunities. ACL customers are now able to map risks directly to specific strategic performance goals within the software and then systematically, using data analytics, assess and act on the roadblocks on the path to achieving those goals. Spring release updates include:

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) & Key Risk Indicator (KRI) tracking: Key performance and key risk indicators are combined into one continuously monitored dashboard, enabling automatic adjustments to risk assessments based on performance goals and current conditions of operations observed in the organization's "big data."
Collaborative risk workshops: Managers tasked with also evaluating key risks based on board, executive management or operational leadership feedback can now conduct risk assessment voting workshops within the platform, each informed by qualitative analysis and a real-time view of KPIs and KRIs.
Quantified measurement of residual risk: By treating risk assessment like a balance sheet and measuring inherent risks alongside existing treatments, the ACL Platform can take mitigation activities into account and suggest a write-down estimate—providing a more thorough, objective and quantified metric of residual risk.
Libraries of strategic risk by vertical: The ACL Platform catalogs the most common top risks, based on S&P 500 company 10-Ks, allowing GRC teams to benchmark their risk universe to those of their peers in order to provide valuable insight on risks in their industry across business units such as operations, marketing, sales, etc.

Lightening the operational burden & cost of regulatory compliance

With thousands of regulatory changes occurring each year¹, keeping on top of compliance can be daunting. Add in an increasing risk of massive penalties and, in some cases, being held personally liable, and it's overwhelmingly clear how important it is to maintain updated, accurate compliance records.

ACL's Spring 2017 updates enable compliance managers to track and quickly map the requirements that matter most, easing the compliance burden while documenting everything to provide clear, self-serve oversight for regulators.

Compliance assurance metric: Provides a single, overall metric that gives management an instant understanding of the degree to which the organization is compliant by regulation, business process or operating entity.
Compliance maps: A feature that maps the whole universe of applicable regulations to the organization's controls and frameworks, eliminating duplicated efforts and creating a much simpler and clearer path to compliance.
Regulatory change management: Simply update the controls map and any regulatory changes will illuminate gaps requiring new controls.
New regulatory compliance content packs: These provide pre-built regulatory standards for seven major areas of regulation including: internal control over financial reporting, IT governance and cybersecurity, banking, healthcare and the public sector, all prepopulated for use with the controls map within the ACL Platform.

"With these enhancements from ACL, we can easily create an objective picture of our combined risk and compliance assurance," commented Rod Verhulp, vice president of finance at Equinix. "We can thoroughly understand our own performance and the obstacles we're facing—all informed by our own transactional data."

To see how Equinix is using the ACL Platform for data-driven enterprise risk management, visit: www.acl.com/portfolio-items/data-driven-enterprise-risk-management-at-equinix/.

To learn more about ACL's Spring '17 product enhancements, visit: https://www.acl.com/spring-release/

Supporting Resources:

To learn more about ACL's data-driven GRC platform and best practices resources, visit www.acl.com/solutions.
For the latest news and best practices in audit, finance, risk management, compliance and anti-fraud, visit: www.acl.com/blog
Follow ACL on Twitter: @ACLServices
Join ACL on LinkedIn: www.acl.com/LinkedIn
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About ACL
ACL delivers software solutions that are transforming audit, compliance, and risk management to give organizations unprecedented control over their business. www.acl.com

¹ "Counting Regulations: An Overview of Rulemaking, Types of Federal Regulations, and Pages in the Federal Register." Carey, Maeve P. Congressional Research Service. 04 Oct. 2016. <<https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43056.pdf>>.

SOURCE ACL