How and Why You Should Improve Your Reporting Process

{{intro-Integrating-grc-new="/guides-comp"}}

Is Your GRC Reporting Holding You Back?

Reporting isn’t just a checkbox exercise—it can be a true strategic asset. Reporting helps you do your job better by showing where you stand, helping you see opportunities for improvement and measuring the impact of changes. But self-awareness is only part of the picture. Reporting is also the channel for communicating your work across the organization, shaping how leaders think of GRC and make decisions for the business.

Our research on GRC maturity shows a direct link between how GRC is perceived and how effectively the GRC program drives business outcomes. Yet, many GRC teams struggle to turn their reporting into a tool for influence. And so the question becomes: Are your reports telling the right story?

A good GRC report speaks directly to its audience, providing meaningful context on risk and compliance while demonstrating its business impact. But too often, outdated tools, time-consuming manual processes, and a lack of customization options, hold GRC teams back from delivering reports that prove ROI and drive action across the organization.

{{gcp-7="/guides-comp"}}

The hidden costs of ineffective reporting

Many GRC teams know their reporting process isn’t ideal, but they underestimate just how much it’s holding them back.

• Lost Time: Manual reporting eats up hours every week, pulling teams away from important tasks.
• Missed Opportunities: Stale data leads to delayed or error-prone decisions, increasing business risk.
• Lack of Influence: Reporting should showcase GRC’s value, but too often, it falls flat.

These challenges make it harder for GRC teams to provide timely, actionable insights. And without strong reporting, it’s difficult to change how GRC is perceived in the business.

Why is it so hard for GRC teams to get reporting right?

The challenge of reporting on GRC efforts comes down to a few universal factors.

1. Leaders and stakeholders need customized reporting

When building dashboards and compiling reports, it’s vital to keep your end users’ needs and preferences in mind. From senior management to technical teams, auditors to the Board of Directors, each stakeholder group has unique needs and preferences when it comes to data presentations and reports. The Finance team wants to see dollar amounts, while Legal might prefer a percentage score of compliance against regulations. What’s vital to one audience may be irrelevant to another. It takes research and thoughtful planning to decide what to include in reports to various audiences.

2. Manual reporting is a time sink you can’t afford

Catering to the needs of your leaders and stakeholders is easier said than done. Once you decide what to report on for each stakeholder or group, you will need to collect that information, format it, and distribute it. And then repeat that process on a weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly basis. Reporting can eat up a lot of your team’s time and effort if these steps are all done manually. The work is further complicated by the fact that GRC is dynamic and takes agility to stay current with reporting.

{{gcp-8="/guides-comp"}}

3. Bad data and outdated reports lead to bad decisions

Let’s say you decide to put in the effort to get reporting right. You handcraft custom dashboards and reports for your stakeholders with the exact information they need, arranged in a format that suits them best. You still face two major problems:

{{rp-1="/guides-comp"}}

In both cases, you’re leaving stakeholders to make decisions based on questionable data, and that puts the business at risk.

When you consider the pressure to share insights at the speed of the business, it’s no surprise that many organizations opt for bare-bones reporting. But there will always be situations where comprehensive custom reports are necessary and the question of what those reports are based on is an important one.

Reimagining GRC Reporting for the Data Age

When you build GRC reports manually, the process may seem like a compromise between creating contextually rich custom reports and getting the bare minimum of information to stakeholders’ hands as quickly as possible. It is a classic question of speed versus quality.

{{rgrcr-1="/guides-comp"}}

You may already know that data-driven GRC programs can automate all kinds of GRC tasks, from evidence collection to control mapping and risk recalculation. Automation opens the door to continuous compliance monitoring and management. Now you can tap into your GRC data and leverage it for an additional use case - reporting.

{{gcp-9="/guides-comp"}}

Audits look backward at the previous 12–18 months. With the real-time data you are already collecting as evidence, your reports don’t have to be backward-looking. They can become a source of up-to-date insights, fueling proactive business decisions based on the risks the organization is currently facing.

Custom Reports that Benefit Everyone

With the right data at your disposal, you can now focus on tailoring reports for different stakeholders in your organization.

{{gcp-10="/guides-comp"}}

Admins and managers

Reporting is often a source of delays and bottlenecks. Customizing dashboards and automating reporting removes those issues, improving operational efficiency with reduced time-to-insight.

Executives and CISOs

Access to data is a start, but what’s more valuable? A clear, relevant presentation that contextualizes that data, making the data digestible and easy to act upon. With custom reports, you can give leaders a deeper understanding of compliance program activities and statuses and help your leadership make more informed strategic decisions.

The entire organization

Sharing access to key GRC data opens the door to driving more decisions across the business with risk and compliance insights. Greater transparency builds accountability across teams and helps teams align better. With good reporting, you create a feedback loop where everyone starts to speak the same language and understand how to tie GRC metrics to business values.

Three types of custom reporting you need to do your job better

Framework reporting

Whether you’re reporting for CCFs or widely used frameworks like NIST CSF and CIS Controls, detailed reporting per control family is often necessary. Different stakeholders—from auditors to security teams—may require varying levels of granularity, making customization essential. Tailoring reports to reflect specific control mappings and implementation details ensures clarity and accuracy.

Risk reporting

Organizations approach risk differently, and we have yet to see two that report on it in exactly the same way. Risk reports always require customization, whether to align with internal methodologies, regulatory expectations, or executive preferences. Even when starting with a template, adjustments are inevitable to ensure the report reflects the organization’s unique risk appetite and operational context.

Enterprise reporting

Large organizations often operate across multiple business units, subsidiaries, or product lines, each with distinct reporting requirements. Generating consolidated reports that provide both high-level overviews and granular insights can be a challenge. For example, if a company manages multiple SOC 2 frameworks but needs a unified report for prospective customers, a custom approach is the only way to provide an accurate and cohesive view.

Get Reporting Right, Finally

GRC Reporting should never be an afterthought. Reporting isn’t just a way to share your team’s activity between audits; it’s your opportunity to create joint ownership with control owners and other stakeholders and build buy-in for your program. In short, you can shift the organization’s perception of GRC.

{{gcp-11="/guides-comp"}}