Luis Ramos CEO The Network

The Network, Inc., a leading provider of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, announced today that it has been recognized by Forrester Research, Inc. in the “The Forrester Wave:  Governance, Risk, And Compliance Platforms, Q1 2014” report. The report, which evaluates GRC vendors based on current offering, strategy and market presence, assesses 19 of the most relevant vendors in the GRC space.
 
The report cites The Network’s go-to-market strategy to “address compliance challenges relevant to a wide range of organizations, with flexibility to support industry-specific compliance initiatives when necessary.” The report also states that The Network is one of two vendors that has “certain capabilities unmatched by the other vendors in this evaluation.”  
 
While Forrester did not break out the scoring based on GRC submarkets, it did provide additional sets of weightings for a number of specific use cases, including corporate compliance, environmental compliance, and social responsibility.  
 
“We are proud that Forrester has acknowledged The Network as a top provider in the GRC space, and we view this report as an affirmation of our unique approach to integrated GRC for compliance professionals,” said Luis Ramos, The Network’s CEO, who led development efforts toward the company’s employee-focused ethics and compliance solutions. “By bringing together policy management, training and awareness, risk assessments, survey tools and incident management solutions with best-practice workflow automation tools that integrate seamlessly with our reporting and analysis capabilities, we are providing organizations with innovative ways to address compliance challenges and drive enterprise performance.”
 
“The Forrester Wave:  Governance, Risk, And Compliance Platforms, Q1 2014” report marks the first time the independent research firm has published a single, consolidated Forrester Wave evaluation of the top GRC platform vendors with a few additional sets of weightings based on some common initial GRC implementations such as:  IT GRC, corporate compliance, financial controls, environmental health and safety, and third-party risk. The report weighed 43 criteria points for evaluation.  Forrester considered more than 50 vendors that market GRC capabilities for inclusion in the report. Sixty-six GRC customer organizations were also surveyed for the report.
 
In its report, Forrester warns buyers not to “lump any vendor into this growing group based just on marketing language,” stating that “a true GRC platform includes four basic functions”:

• A relational database stores GRC data and maps its context within the organization
• A workflow engine facilitates GRC processes
• Content management capabilities store critical documentation
• Reporting capabilities create understanding and drive decisions

The Network is a leading provider of integrated governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions that allow organizations to create better workplaces and ethical cultures. The Network’s Integrated GRC Suite, recognized as the “Apple of GRC” by GRC 20/20, is the first natively integrated enterprise GRC software platform in the compliance industry. The Suite was built to leverage the way employees retain and apply ethics and compliance information and helps companies prevent, detect and remediate non-compliance and unethical conduct. A SaaS-based technology solution, the Suite integrates policy management, training and communications, Code of Conduct, surveys and assessments, and case management, all on a reporting and analytics platform. Originally established as the first whistleblower hotline provider in 1982, The Network serves thousands of organizations in every industry, including nearly half of the Fortune 500.