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Experience the Power of Connection

Power of Connection
3 min read

Introduction

It feels great to get back on the road and travel to see customers face to face. I have logged more than a hundred thousand miles and visited more than ten countries in the past three months. With all the technological advancements in the world, the inherent value of being face to face with customers is immeasurable. Trust me when I say, if you are not back in the office you may have forgotten what you are missing. The collaboration and productiveness alone are worth it. Even more, when people come together, they start to share ideas and cast a vision for the future.

We recently held two Customer Advisory Councils during the GRC Summit in London. The Councils were attended by CROs, heads of risk, senior risk, and technology professionals from several global financial institutions, energy, telecommunications, and technology companies from around the world.

I walked away with a healthy optimism and a view of the many things we are doing well and a few we can do better. What was clearest throughout my conversations is the vision we have for MetricStream resonates with our customers and that ConnectedGRC is not just a concept, it's a critical aspect of our customers' GRC strategy and the lens that every CXO should be using when considering risk.

What Does a ConnectedGRC Strategy Mean?

It's simple. A ConnectedGRC strategy empowers organizations to pursue an integrated approach to GRC and ensure collaboration between risk, compliance, audit, cybersecurity, and sustainability teams. It enables businesses to better identify, assess, manage, and mitigate strategic risks whether operational risks, IT and cyber risks, third-party risks, or ESG.

Critical to the pursuit of a Connected strategy are simplicity, automation, and predictive capabilities. These are the three core innovation areas where we are focused: Continuous, Cognitive, and Cloud.

With rapid regulatory changes and market conditions, workflow and sample-based assessments are no longer enough. Customers need real-time continuous assessments that are hyper-automated. They also need the ability to access the full population of data, rather than a sample, from various data sources. Recent advancements in Continuous Control Monitoring are making this possible.

Over the years organizations have collected vast amounts of data across risk, audit, and compliance programs. Cognitive capabilities including AI-centric workflows enable predictive and prescriptive capabilities. That means having a deeper understanding of emerging risks, the real cost of compliance violations, and monetary impact so that they can prioritize investments and resources.

Cloud is no longer about hosting in the cloud or cloud-native architecture. As businesses demand high performance and faster turnaround, low-code/no-code GRC platforms are the future. Without an army of high-skilled programmers, organizations can create and configure GRC applications with hyper-automated workflows and connected insights. The result is applications that are 10X faster, easier, and more secure. The cloud is the catalyst for radical changes in the way GRC application development, maintenance, and upgrades are implemented.

Empowering Risk Professionals is Critical to Achieve Success

This is all great but critical to long-term success is the need to empower risk professionals. As the business environment intensifies across all aspects of risk, risk professionals are being faced with an unprecedented level of pressure. Innovation can bring us only so far. There is great strength in banding together as a profession to bring about positive change and clarity of focus. This is precisely what we did at the recently held GRC Summit and will continue to do in the future as well– Experience the Power of Connection. We bring together global experts to share insights, and best practices and learn from each other but most of all use the time to problem solve and gain focus and clarity about the future of GRC.

I have been in this industry for more than 20 years, and what has been constant is the need to remain agile and flexible to change. If you think about it, it's probably the single most important attribute of a risk professional. But, today, with a ConnectedGRC lens you can not only remain agile and flexible, but you can add a predictive and proactive nature to your profile.

Gaurav-Kapoor MetricStream

Gaurav Kapoor Co-founder & Vice Chairman

Gaurav Kapoor is the Co-Founder, Vice Chairman and Board Member at MetricStream focused on AI-First growth strategy and execution, customer expansion and market competitiveness.

Prior to this, as CEO, Gaurav led MetricStream to become a global market leader in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), delivering value to customers, shareholders, employees, and partners. Over the past decade, he has played key leadership roles—Co-CEO, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer—driving Strategy, Go-to-Market, Sales, Marketing, Partnerships, Customer Success, Service Delivery, and Support through various phases of the company’s growth.

Gaurav also served as the founding CFO of the company helping lay the early foundation for the company’s long-term success. Under his leadership, MetricStream has expanded its global footprint, serving customers in over 30 countries with a workforce of more than 1,000 employees. Its investors have included BlueTorch Capital, Goldman Sachs, Clearlake Capital, Sageview Capital, CM Growth, Kaiser Ventures, and Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDBI). MetricStream counts many Global 500 companies among its customers.

Prior to MetricStream, he was at OpenGrowth, an incubation and venture firm where he helped build and grow several companies including ArcadiaOne and Regalix. Prior to that, he spent several years in high growth business roles at Citi in Asia and the U.S including consumer digital payments and derivative financial products.

Mr. Kapoor has a Bachelor's degree in Technology (with Honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology, a degree in Business from FMS, Delhi, and an MBA from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar. He has served on the board of Regalix, a digital innovation and marketing company for a decade and an investor/advisor to other technology companies.

Apart from a high degree of customer intimacy working closely with dozens of the largest global organizations, he has been a regular contributor and speaker at the GRC Summit, IIA, Ops Risk, GARP, RMA, and SIFMA, among many other industry platforms. He is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council and NACD certified member.