by Steve Suther, September 17, 2009

I grabbed a quick bite of breakfast in the restaurant of the Aloft Hotel in Minneapolis this morning, which oddly enough happened to be named “Re:Fuel.” I say oddly because I’m here for the Archer Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Roadshow, so I feel like there’s definitely a theme going on in downtown Minneapolis. This leg of our Roadshow, sponsored by MSI Systems Integrators, is off to a bang (and I’m not referring to the sound of my car backfiring), with users from companies such as U.S. Bancorp, Northwest Airlines and Ameriprise Financial in attendance, just to name a few.

Archer Senior Executive Sean Pyle kicked the morning off, getting us all excited with a demonstration of the upcoming version of the Archer SmartSuite Framework (5.0 for those of you keeping track). With its new look and feel and many functional enhancements, it promises to make both developing and using our solutions easier than ever.

The day continued with several presentations from customers and partners related to Archer solution use cases and strategic road-mapping of their GRC programs, which generated a lot of discussion among those in the room.  While all are worth highlighting, I was pleased to hear in Ameriprise’s presentation that they have leveraged their Archer Vendor Management solution implementation for several years now to mature the organization’s third-party service provider governance and compliance program.

Whether it was during presentations, between sessions or at lunch speaking with others casually, it’s been great to hear that organizations are able to derive true and measureable benefits from utilizing Archer’s solutions to tackle what seem to be pretty common challenges. Silos of risk and compliance data that need to be consolidated and related to each other and a lack of holistic reporting were two oft-discussed examples of problems that our customers are solving with Archer.

Take a look at the schedule of upcoming GRC Roadshow stops. If you’re able to get to one, I guarantee that we’ll get your GRC engines revved up and firing on all cylinders.  I’m off to the networking reception. Blog with you again soon!