by David Walter – November 18, 2009
Greetings from the Pacific Northwest and the Archer GRC Roadshow in Seattle. Thanks to our hosts at KPMG, we had a great day and a packed house of customers (new and old), partners, and organizations that are evaluating Archer solutions. We also had a diverse set of industries represented, including technology, food and beverage, telecommunications and retail.
The Archer Community was in full force in Seattle with a great deal of discussion about how to “operationalize” governance, risk and compliance (GRC). It was gratifying to hear a conversation between two customers—one who has been using the Archer Incident Management solution for a year and another who is brand new to Archer—as they discussed best practices for solution implementation and achieving quick wins. I also took part in an open dialog with a group of Roadshow participants about the flexibility of the Archer SmartSuite Framework. One customer discussed the ability to distribute Framework administration across multiple departments to enable greater use of the tool. Another described the use of process flows at the top of every Archer screen to depict where the user stands within a process and what’s ahead—a great method for simplifying workflow. This type of peer-to-peer collaboration provides tremendous value to our Roadshow participants, and as I take part in these conversations, it’s thrilling for me to see the Archer Community in action.
Over the course of the 14 Roadshow stops that Archer is hosting, we will have reached more than 700 GRC professionals. There have been great conversations and sharing of ideas, but now we must challenge ourselves to continue the dialogue. The Archer Community has many great resources for enabling ongoing discussions, including Working Groups, discussion forums, free Friday training sessions and the Idea Exchange. If you were unable to attend one of the Roadshow events, there’s still time to attend in Los Angeles or London, but also you can download many of our Roadshow presentations from the Archer Community.
The Archer GRC Roadshow will take a week hiatus due to the Thanksgiving holiday, and I know that my wife is thankful to have me home for a week. For my part, I’m thankful to be working with such great, intelligent, and dedicated colleagues, customers, partners, and analysts to help companies tackle some very complicated and important issues regarding governance, risk management and compliance. I wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving and a safe and relaxing holiday.