2025 has been a revealing year for Governance, Risk and Compliance teams.
Across CoreStream GRC’s community events in London and New York, industry events like #RISK Europe, our design workshops and hundreds of conversations with clients and experts, one interesting theme kept surfacing. Many of the most common GRC challenges are not structural failures. They are small execution gaps that compound over time.
And the good news is that most can be fixed with a few small changes.
These 6 quick fixes come directly from what we’ve seen across our community and our research into the wider market. They focus on practical steps you can take now (without a major transformation program).
Since CoreStream GRC is built to flex around how organizations actually work, we are always trying to learn more about the challenges we see and share the lessons that drives results effectively.
Quick fix 1: Rewrite risk reporting in business language and keep it to one page
The problem: leaders not engaging with risk reporting
Most GRC teams still report in a way that feels abstract, negative or built for regulators rather than leaders. The result is familiar. Reports get ignored, decisions slow down, and governance stays disconnected from business priorities.
CoreStream GRC’s 2025 research backed this up.
Only 20% of organizations said their GRC program is tied to business value. Most are still judged on defensive metrics like risk reduction and regulatory compliance.
In other words, if your reporting does not translate risk into outcomes leaders care about, the message just will not land.
This year, at #RISK Europe, experts repeated this same advice: drop style over substance, pre-emptively answer “so what” follow-ups and translate technical risk language into business language.
And even more importantly, remembering that leadership will read a 1-page pack. They will not read 60.
The fix
For your next board or executive risk report try to:
- Cut it to 1 page
- Anchor each point in business outcomes: profit, growth, resilience, customers
- For every issue, answer clearly:
- Why does this matter now?
- What decision do we need from you?
Boards want clarity, not fear-based theatrics or technical lectures. In our experience, outcome-focused reporting lands better and leads to better decisions. This is why we offer our clients customized risk on a page reporting, focused on the metrics they care about.
Want to learn more from our #RISK Europe insights?
Quick fix 2: Close 1 execution gap by killing system sprawl
The problem: GRC in uncentralized and under-invested in
Across the market, the biggest blockers teams report are resource constraints, siloed systems and lack of executive buy-in. System sprawl drains time, creates duplication, and weakens assurance.
However, CoreStream GRC clients have a very different experience. Why?
- They bring their workflows into one place,
- Apply consistent, standardized logic and
- Identify and remove a lot of the day-to-day friction, which slows people.
The fix
Pick 1 process still stuck in spreadsheets or email and move it into a single source of truth.
For example:
- Third-party onboarding
- Incident reporting
- Policy attestations
Standardize the workflow, remove duplicated entry, and make sure everyone touches the same record. Even 1 consolidation starts to shrink the execution gap.
We see the difference this makes across our community, which is why we share this guidance so openly.
Want to hear more from our experts?
Quick fix 3: Pick one AI use case inside GRC, and wrap it in guardrails
The problem: AI feels overwhelming
AI is high interest but low execution. Many teams want to use it. Few know where to start.
The market data shows the shift:
McKinsey reports that AI adoption in at least one business function rose from 20% in 2017 to 78% in 2024, and now sits at 88% in 2025 across surveyed enterprises.
However, at the same time, experts warn that AI must operate with governance, oversight and with human intervention.
“AI in GRC should enhance human judgment, not replace it. It supplements decision-making rather than automates it.“
Rich Eddolls, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, CoreStream GRC
The fix
Stop debating AI in the abstract and choose one low risk, high value use case inside your existing GRC work.
For example:
With the CoreStream GRC personal AI assisant you could:
- Use our instant auto-population feature for forms. Just select your preferred suggestion, and watch as your forms are auto populated in seconds.
- Use the AI to ensure precision and consistency, reducing the risk of manual errors and saving time on tedious data entry
- Provide a simple risk description or even a partial idea, and our AI Co-Pilot instantly generates enriched, high-quality content suggestions.
- Have your employees ask questions for guidance and allow the AI assistant to generate responses quoting sources from all policies and procedures.
“The next natural step was to integrate our own Generative AI LLM into the platform to unlock even greater value from our GRC processes in a secure and intelligent way.
CoreStream GRC quickly designed and implemented the integration, allowing us to significantly enhance our GRC tool’s capabilities and further strengthen our ability to protect and assure Pets at Home. The resulting solution has dramatically increased our productivity through automation, with examples including suggesting wording for review rather than time intensive manual creation.
I highly recommend CoreStream GRC for its tailored, AI-powered GRC solutions.”
Nikki Absolom, Group Head of Financial Controls, Pets at Home
Quick fix 4: Make ownership and culture visible, not just “more controls”
The problem: compliance teams are buried under controls
When GRC teams feel stuck, they default to adding more controls, more policies, and more checklists. But real maturity comes from ownership, accountability, leadership alignment and culture.
“Risk becomes mechanical rather than meaningful when compliance replaces strategy.”
Michael Rasmussen, Pundit and GRC 20/20 Founder
The fix: Do a simple ownership and culture health check
- List your top 10 principal risks and write the named owner for each, plus how that links to a strategic objective.
- Check if risk is present in early strategy meetings, not just at the end as a blocker.
- Add one behavioral metric to your reporting, such as speaking up data, quality of risk conversations, or survey results on psychological safety.
If you cannot name the owner or show the link to strategy, you have a culture gap, not a control gap.
Want to get your program back to strategy? CoreStream GRC’s complimentary workshops helps team rebuild ownership, alignment and culture from the ground up.
Quick fix 5: Swap “activity logs” for value metrics
The problem: most GRC teams value is not recorded
Most teams are still judged on defensive outputs: risk reduction, compliance hours and control tests. Almost no one is measured on business value.
One UK participant at the CoreStream GRC community event captured it perfectly:
“We need clearer value metrics, not just activity logs.”
The fix
Choose 3 core metrics and reframe them around impact, not volume.
For example:
- From “number of controls tested” to “% of critical controls operating effectively for top strategic risks”
- From “incidents closed” to “time to detect” and “time to contain”
- Link at least one dashboard view directly to resilience, customer outcomes or revenue impact
Did you know?
According to PwC’s Global Risk Survey, organizations that integrate risk management with strategic planning are significantly more likely to outperform peers on growth and resilience.
This is the heart of value-based GRC: measuring what actually changes organizational performance.
Want to learn more about value-based GRC?
Quick fix 6: Fix 2 UX blockers that stop people using your GRC tools
The problem
GRC leaders repeatedly call out the same adoption barriers: clunky workflows, too many fields, multiple logins, and duplicated effort. Users disengage not because they reject the process, but because the system feels harder than the work itself.
Usability research from the Nielsen Norman Group finds that users often abandon products when they can’t find what they need or the interface feels too difficult to use.
This applies equally to enterprise tools: if your GRC system feels clunky or hard to navigate, people will stop using it even if they know the process matters.
“If something feels clunky, users stop using it, even if they can’t always articulate why.”
Lionel Matsuya, Head of Solution Design, CoreStream GRC
The fix:
Run a mini “user clinic” with first line users and ask a very blunt question: What makes you dread opening this system?
Then commit to fixing 2 things this quarter, such as:
- Reducing fields in a key form to the essentials.
- Cleaning up navigation so users see only what they need.
- Integrating with HR, finance, or ticketing tools so they do not have to enter the same data 3 times.
Small UX changes drive massive adoption gains.
Want to learn more from our solution design expert?
- Read our GRC solution design webinar Q&A
Closing: Why we’re sharing these GRC quick fixes
These helpful fixes come from real conversations across our global community. They are simple, fast, and proven. GRC does not need more complexity. It needs clarity, design discipline, and tools that work the way people actually work.
At CoreStream GRC, we see ourselves as partners in that job. Our platform is built to flex, integrate, and scale around your needs. But the technology is only half of the story. The other half is sharing what we learn so every team in our community can move faster, avoid common pitfalls, and build GRC programs that deliver real value.
If you want to explore any of these ideas in more depth, our team is always happy to talk.
FAQ on optimizing for GRC
CoreStream GRC integrates AI to speed up thinking and reduce manual effort while keeping humans fully in control. Teams like Pets at Home use the Ask AI bot to generate suggestions, write test scripts, and link AI driven risk insights directly into policy management. AI handles the heavy lifting. People make the decisions.
Start by listing your principal risks and confirming the named owner for each. Check that risk is discussed early in strategy conversations, not only at the end. Add at least one behavioural metric, such as psychological safety or quality of risk conversations. If you cannot name the owner or the strategic link, you have a culture gap, not a control gap.
We offer complimentary workshops that help teams rebuild ownership, clarify strategic links, and reset culture from the ground up. These sessions help move GRC out of admin mode and back to strategy.
Activity logs measure volume, not value. They reward busyness, not outcomes. Research shows organizations that integrate risk insights with strategy outperform peers on growth and resilience. Value based reporting helps leaders see how GRC influences performance, not just compliance.
Common blockers include clunky workflows, too many fields, poor navigation, repeated data entry, and multiple login points. Users disengage not because they reject GRC, but because the system feels harder than the work.
The platform links risks, controls, incidents, policies, and insights in one place. Dashboards surface impact, not volume. AI speeds up analysis. Integrations keep data flowing without manual effort. Everything is built to help teams deliver value, not admin.
