Modern risk frameworks (ISO 31000, COSO ERM, NIST RMF) all stress that risk management should align with strategy and deliver real outcomes – not just checkboxes. In practice, however, many legacy GRC systems (RSA Archer, MetricStream, SAP GRC, etc.) still focus on counting activities (e.g. number of audits, controls tested or policies updated) rather than tracking the effectiveness of those activities. As OCEG notes, “discovering the true value of a GRC system goes beyond merely measuring its activities like risk assessment or policy management. Instead, it’s about understanding the outcomes these activities drive”. In other words, compliance teams must link their efforts to tangible business results – for example, demonstrating that controls are working and risks are actually reduced – rather than simply reporting that tasks were completed.
Industry research echoes this disconnect. Gartner found that 69% of organizations are not confident that their current GRC activities will meet future needs. That’s because first-generation GRC tools took a bottom-up, activity-driven approach: complex systems built around data capture and manual workflows. They can serve basic functions, but “rarely help organizations achieve the vision of an agile, always-on, continuous, and risk-aware” program. In practice this means key performance insights are missing. For example, RSA Archer’s Key Indicator module can track metrics, but in many implementations “missing or inaccurate key indicator reporting” leaves teams unable to “accurately gauge or compare performance in terms of meeting strategic and operational goals, risk, and control performance”. Similarly, traditional RCSA processes in tools like MetricStream often become “a check-in-the-box activity” that yields “poor quality, delayed, or incomplete assessments providing no valuable risk intelligence”. In short, these systems excel at cataloging data (policies, controls, findings) but seldom demonstrate improvement or value.
Why Activities Aren’t Enough: Focusing only on outputs leads to a fragmented view. It’s easy to count “100 audits completed” or “1,000 training sessions held”, but those figures tell leadership little about actual risk reduction or compliance effectiveness. Traditional GRC reporting emphasizes efficiency (are we completing processes) rather than effectiveness (are we achieving risk and strategic goals). For instance, an audit management module might report how many issues were closed – but not whether those fixes actually prevented repeat incidents. If the same findings keep recurring, legacy platforms often have no built-in way to highlight that trend. In fact, an increasing audit finding recurrence rate is itself a powerful KPI: it “may indicate ineffective corrective actions or a lack of follow-up on previous findings,” implying that the organization’s risk posture isn’t improving. Yet most older GRC systems simply log each finding statically and move on.
Limitations of Traditional GRC Platforms
Leading tools like RSA Archer, MetricStream or SAP GRC brought important capabilities (integrating risks, controls, audits, etc.), but their original designs carry over limitations:
- Activity-Centric Metrics: These platforms excel at counting activities—number of risk assessments conducted, controls tested, issues resolved—but often lack built-in metrics for outcomes. You might know how many controls are in place, but not how effective they truly are. For example, Archer provides a framework to manage risk inventories and controls, but without sophisticated analytics it’s hard to correlate those controls to actual risk reduction. Archer’s own documentation warns that without good indicator data, organizations “are unable to accurately gauge or compare performance in terms of meeting strategic and operational goals”. MetricStream’s RCSA tools likewise can capture risk data, but their traditional use often devolves into periodic checklists that aren’t aligned with strategy.
- Siloed Data and Processes: Many legacy GRC solutions store data separately by function (risk, compliance, audit, vendor, etc.). This fragmented approach creates redundant processes and an incomplete view. As one industry analyst notes, “many organizations still rely on disconnected GRC modules, resulting in siloed data, redundant processes, and an incomplete picture of their risk and compliance status”. For example, a policy change recorded in one module may not automatically update controls or risk registers elsewhere, so teams lose context. Even if each unit tracks its own metrics, combining them into a holistic dashboard is cumbersome or manual.
- Static, Manual Workflows: Traditional GRC often depends on periodic surveys and spreadsheets. A risk assessment might be done once a year on schedule, not continuously updated. This means metrics quickly go out of date in a dynamic risk environment. As MetricStream explains, outdated RCSA methods are “time and resource-intensive due to the manual approach,” leading to inefficiencies and missed emerging risks. Moreover, there’s often no automated workflow to track whether recommended actions are actually implemented – another gap in linking work to results.
- Limited Reporting and KPIs: Even when data exists, legacy platforms have limited analytics. They might report counts or static risk ratings, but not trend lines or predictive insights. Key risk indicators (KRIs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) require careful calculation; many older GRC systems leave this up to users to build custom reports. For example, if you want to know how long it takes to mitigate top-tier risks or whether your control maturity is improving, most legacy tools have no out-of-the-box metric.
In summary, legacy GRC tools tend to answer “How many?” instead of “How well?” or “With what impact?” This misalignment is exactly what modern risk standards warn against.
Frameworks Demand Outcome-Focused GRC
Leading risk standards and frameworks explicitly call for aligning GRC with strategic goals and measuring effectiveness:
- COSO ERM: The updated COSO framework emphasizes “strategic alignment” – linking risk management with the organization’s strategy and performance. COSO advises that risk oversight should be integrated into the overall performance management process, so that risk activities directly support business objectives.
- ISO 31000: The ISO risk standard repeatedly stresses integration and continuous improvement. ISO 31000:2018 principles say risk management must be part of organizational governance and “aligned with its strategy, objectives, and risk appetite”. It calls for a dynamic, iterative process (Plan-Do-Check-Act) that adjusts as risks change. ISO 31000’s goal is a “repeatable, proactive and strategic program” where management regularly reviews results and ensures risk treatments fit long-term objectives.
- NIST RMF (SP 800‑37): In the federal Risk Management Framework, the Assess step explicitly requires verifying that controls are “operating as intended, and producing the desired outcome”. This underscores that controls should be measured by their effectiveness, not just by whether they exist or have been implemented.
- OCEG GRC Capability: The Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG) similarly stresses outcomes over outputs. Their guidance lists alignment with business objectives, stakeholder confidence, continuous improvement and value creation as key reasons to measure GRC outcomes. For example, resource optimization is only possible when you know which actions are truly reducing risk, not just which are completed.
These frameworks make clear that GRC success is defined by risk reduction, compliance assurance, and business continuity – all tied back to strategic goals. A modern GRC platform must therefore offer metrics on effectiveness (e.g., how much risk has been reduced, control maturity levels, incident trends) rather than just activity tallies.
Key Performance Metrics Legacy GRC Misses
To bridge the gap, organizations need to measure indicators that reflect actual performance. Some examples of outcome-oriented metrics include:
- Audit Finding Recurrence Rate: How often do closed audit findings reappear in subsequent audits? A rising recurrence rate implies that corrective actions aren’t effective. As one internal audit KPI library notes, “an increasing audit finding recurrence rate may indicate ineffective corrective actions or a lack of follow-up on previous findings”. Tracking this rate (the percentage of past issues that recur) signals whether root causes are addressed.
- Control Maturity Scores: Instead of a binary “exists/doesn’t exist” flag for each control, control maturity scoring evaluates the robustness and consistency of controls (often on scales like Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed, Optimized). Over time, scores should improve if the control environment strengthens. Many legacy tools lack native support for maturity models, making it hard to quantify improvement in control effectiveness.
- Mitigation Velocity: This measures the speed of risk reduction actions – for example, how quickly high-impact findings are remediated. It’s not just whether an issue was closed, but how fast it was closed relative to risk level. A short average closure time for critical risks indicates a responsive program.
- Integrated Risk Exposure: True risk is not siloed by department. An outcome-focused metric could be an enterprise-wide risk exposure index, calculated from the aggregated residual risks across business units. This requires that risk registers and assessments are linked and rolled up, something legacy GRC often struggles to do without heavy customization.
- KPI/KRI Alignment: Many organizations track compliance (activities done) and operational KPIs (e.g. revenue, safety incidents) separately. A holistic GRC metric ties them together – for instance, “risk-adjusted return” on strategic objectives, or ratio of controls to risk exposure. Traditional systems rarely provide such cross-domain linking out-of-the-box.
In short, meaningful GRC metrics answer questions like “Are the controls working?”, “Is our risk profile improving?”, and “Which areas still need attention?”. Most older platforms do not automatically calculate these – instead, busy teams must cobble together spreadsheets.
Connected Risk by Empowered: A New Paradigm
Connected Risk™ (by Empowered Systems) is built from the ground up to focus on these outcomes. It natively tracks and reports on performance metrics that legacy tools overlook. Key capabilities include:
- Audit Finding Recurrence Tracking: Connected Risk measures the recurrence rate of audit issues, directly surfacing whether previous findings are resurfacing. This lets teams quickly see if corrective actions are truly effective, and target root causes rather than re-fixing symptoms.
- Control Maturity Scoring: Instead of simply noting a control exists, Connected Risk can score each control’s maturity level. This provides a nuanced view of control effectiveness over time, helping management see which controls need strengthening.
- Mitigation Velocity Metrics: The platform automatically measures how long it takes to close risks or findings (often visualized as time-to-mitigate distributions). Faster mitigation of critical risks shows that the organization is responsive. These velocity metrics directly tie into performance goals: for example, reducing the “mean time to mitigate” by 50% is a tangible improvement target.
- Integrated “Single Source of Truth”: Connected Risk seamlessly links data across all GRC functions. Risk registers, compliance records, audit findings, incident reports and corrective actions live in one platform. This contextual integration eliminates blind spots – for instance, a failed control test automatically highlights the related risk and any previous audit findings. As Empowered notes, unified data gives a “comprehensive view of the enterprise’s risk landscape”. Dashboards and reports are real-time, not lagging.
- Configurable, Low-Code Architecture: Unlike rigid legacy systems, Connected Risk is a low-code platform. GRC teams can quickly adapt workflows, forms and metrics to evolving needs without waiting months for IT development. This agility supports the ISO principle of a dynamic, iterative process.
Together, these innovations allow GRC teams to align risk management with strategic performance goals. Instead of telling executives how many checklists were done, teams can report how risk exposure has moved (and why). For example, if a new control lowered the risk score on a key process, that outcome is immediately visible. If audit recurrence rates fall, the C-suite sees a clear story of improved compliance. This kind of outcome-based reporting builds stakeholder confidence (investors, boards, regulators) by showing proof of progress.
Furthermore, Connected Risk’s emphasis on outcomes is fully consistent with standards. It helps satisfy ISO 31000 by tying risk management into strategic decision-making, and supports COSO’s call for performance-linked risk metrics. Its continuous monitoring features mirror NIST’s call to ensure controls produce desired security outcomes. In short, Connected Risk transforms GRC from a static archive of tasks into an intelligent, outcome-driven program.
Final Thoughts
For GRC professionals, the message is clear: Activities alone are not enough. Counting audits and trainings won’t demonstrate value or effectively reduce risk. The industry is moving away from Integrated Risk Management and into GPRC– a holistic approach where data and metrics flow across functions, and the focus is on achieving strategic objectives safely. Connected Risk by Empowered exemplifies this shift. By providing built-in metrics like audit recurrence rates, control maturity scores, and mitigation velocity – all within an interconnected platform – it ensures that governance, risk and compliance efforts translate into real business performance. In doing so, it closes the gap left by legacy GRC tools and delivers the proactive, measurable risk management that modern organizations need.
Ready to move beyond checklists and see how performance-driven GRC can transform your organization?
Discover how Connected Risk by Empowered gives you the metrics that matter—so you can manage risk, prove effectiveness, and drive strategic outcomes.
Or speak with a GRC performance expert to learn how Connected Risk can modernize your audit, risk, and compliance programs.
