Optimising your GRC Processes
Manual GRC: How to Move Beyond Excel Spreadsheets with Symbiant's Agile, Connected, AI Ready, GRC, Risk Management and Audit Platform
Many organisations still use Excel and SharePoint for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) and audit, but these tools lack audit trails, version control, and automation. The result is errors, data breaches, and compliance risks.
Symbiant’s affordable, agile, AI-ready GRC and Audit software replaces outdated methods with a secure, connected ecosystem that ensures transparency, resilience, and compliance, helping you achieve objectives, strengthen resilience, and simplify complex processes.
From only £100 per module/month for unlimited users*
Award-Winning GRC & Audit Software,
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GRC Is No Longer Just About Compliance
The Strategic Value of Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) in Modern Business
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) is foundational to organisational success. More than just meeting regulatory obligations or preparing for audits, effective GRC software provides a strategic framework that drives responsible growth, strengthens operational resilience, and protects long-term business value.
Today’s organisations face constant change and complexity, from regulatory uncertainty and evolving cyber threats to supply chain disruption and rising expectations from stakeholders and boards. Managing governance, risk and compliance in spreadsheets only amplifies these challenges, creating errors, blind spots, and compliance risks.
Modern risk management isn’t just about preventing problems, it’s about enabling better decisions. With a connected GRC framework, you can identify, assess, and treat uncertainties early, protecting your organisation’s objectives, ensuring compliance, and supporting sustainable growth. That’s why forward-thinking organisations are moving away from spreadsheets to secure, cloud-based GRC platforms like Symbiant, creating a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) that unifies risk, compliance, and audit data across the organisation.
The Hidden Cost of Manual GRC Tools
From Spreadsheets to a Single Source of Truth: Transforming Manual GRC & Audit with Symbiant's Connected GRC, RIsk and Audit Platform
Spreadsheets, shared folders, Word documents, and email-based workflows might feel comfortable and a cost- effective way to manage your GRC and Audit processes. But they’re holding your GRC function back. Worse, they’re wasting your most valuable resource: your people.
Tracking controls in Excel, managing policies via Word docs, or chasing audit evidence through endless emails may seem manageable when your team is small. But they don’t scale. They waste time. They increase the risk of error. And they block visibility across departments.
The true cost isn’t just time—it’s opportunity.
Every hour spent duplicating work, formatting reports, or validating outdated information is an hour your team isn’t analysing threats, reducing risk, or preparing for growth. When your most experienced professionals become reactive coordinators instead of proactive leaders, your business suffers.
“With spreadsheets, you don’t manage risk, you manage spreadsheets.”
❌ No automation – manual reminders and reporting waste time and increase risk.
❌ High error rate – over 90%* of spreadsheets contain critical mistakes.
❌ Siloed data – with risk, controls, and actions living in disconnected files.
❌ No scalability – spreadsheets break down as your organisation grows.
❌ No version control – you never truly know who updated what, or when.
❌No audit trail – which makes it difficult to evidence compliance.
❌ Time-consuming – creating reports can take 60–80 hours a month.
❌ No ownership – no clear accountability for who did what, or when.
” We have had nothing but good experiences and we have a very strong relationship with the team at Symbiant. We continue to use Symbiant for a few reasons. 1. Cost – I don’t know of a GRC solution as broad as ours for a similar price. 2. Customisation – we are able to make changes to have the system look, feel, and run to our requirements with ease. 3. Support – the team at Symbiant Support are friendly, knowledgeable, understanding, and quick to respond.”
— Ben Moulds, Risk, Assurance and Compliance Manager, Whist
of spreadsheets
contain errors
lost compiling reports
of spreadsheet-based breaches go undetected
Stop Wasting Expertise on Low-Value Admin
Outdated Tools Are Limiting the Value of GRC
GRC professionals bring deep subject matter expertise and cross-functional insight. They are uniquely positioned to lead strategic initiatives, strengthen organisational resilience, and build trust with stakeholders, from executive leadership to regulators and partners. Yet too often, instead of driving real business impact, they’re stuck in manual GRC processes such as:
- Chasing audit evidence across the organisation
- Revalidating the same controls multiple times
- Copying and pasting data between disconnected spreadsheets and documents
- Formatting policies, risk reports, and compliance reviews for approval
- This isn’t why you hired them — and it isn’t what they should be doing.
When risk management and compliance are disconnected and manual, it becomes harder to engage with business units, track emerging risks, or act strategically. The result? Inefficient audit management, compliance risks, and missed opportunities to create value.
The Hidden Costs of Using Excel Spreadsheets for GRC, Risk Management & Audit
GRC done right should help your organisation move faster, not slower. It should unlock opportunities, reduce uncertainty, and build trust across every stakeholder.
When governance, risk, audit, and compliance processes align with business objectives, GRC becomes a powerful asset. It supports leadership with real-time insight. It builds confidence with regulators, partners, and investors. It helps you scale.
Research shows that nearly 90% of spreadsheets contain errors (source), and compiling reports across multiple versions can take up to 80 hours of staff time (GRC 20/20). With static rows and scattered files, there’s no real-time visibility, and certainly no reliable audit trail.
And efficiency alone isn’t enough. The true value of GRC lies in four dimensions: efficiency, effectiveness, resilience, and agility.
- Efficiency – replacing spreadsheets and silos with a single source of truth.
- Effectiveness – ensuring your risk and compliance efforts actually reduce exposure and support objectives.
- Resilience – detecting, containing, and recovering from risks before they escalate.
- Agility – enabling your business to adapt quickly to new regulations, markets, and emerging risks.
- This is what modern, connected GRC like Symbiant should deliver — not just faster processes, but smarter, safer, and more confident decision-making.
The Risks of Staying in Excel for GRC and Audit
In short, spreadsheets are costing you more than you think. It’s time for a better way to manage risk, compliance, and audit—securely, efficiently, and with confidence.
When GRC is run through spreadsheets, teams waste time managing documents instead of managing risk. You lose opportunities for cross-functional alignment, fast response, and proactive mitigation.
Spreadsheets also create duplication and confusion:
Which version is the latest?
Who owns this risk?
Why wasn’t that action completed?
Where’s the evidence for that audit finding?
The longer you stay in Excel, the more risk becomes invisible, and unmanageable.
Error-Prone Data
A 2020 study from Stanford University found that 88% of data breaches are caused by Human error. No matter how capable or diligent your team may be, mistakes are inevitable when processes are manual. A single typo or broken formula can cascade into inaccurate reports, flawed risk assessments, or compliance failures. And in the context of risk, compliance, and data security, those mistakes can be extremely costly.
No Audit Trail or Accountability
Spreadsheets lack version history and user accountability. You can’t trace who changed what or when—leaving you exposed in the event of an audit or investigation.
Wasted Time & Manual Work
Teams often spend dozens of hours pulling together risk registers and audit reports from multiple files. That’s valuable time lost to low-value admin rather than meaningful risk management.
Outdated, Disconnected Information
Emailing files back and forth leads to version confusion and siloes. You never know if you’re working from the most up-to-date data—hindering decision-making and strategic oversight.
Lack of Security & Control
Spreadsheets offer no real permissions. Anyone with access can make changes or share sensitive data. There’s no visibility, no tracking—and no way to prevent data leakage.
No Real-Time Reporting or Dashboards
Spreadsheets offer static data. You can’t easily create live dashboards or get instant visibility into emerging risks, overdue actions, or compliance gaps. This delays decision-making and increases blind spots—especially at the board or executive level.
No Workflow or Automation
Spreadsheets don’t support automated workflows, reminders, approvals, or escalations. This means teams rely on manual follow-ups, emails, and meetings to keep things moving—slowing everything down and increasing the risk of missed actions.
Not Audit-Ready
During audits, it’s nearly impossible to demonstrate proper documentation, traceability, and evidence trails when everything is buried in disconnected spreadsheets. This can lead to failed audits, delayed responses, and unnecessary fines.
No Single Source of Truth
Spreadsheets fragment your data across multiple files, owners, and silos. Without a central, connected system, you lack a holistic view of your organisation’s risk and compliance posture.
Poor User Experience for Non-Experts
While some risk or compliance pros might be spreadsheet wizards, most business users aren’t. Manual templates often confuse stakeholders or get filled out incorrectly—leading to incomplete or inconsistent data capture.
Move Beyond Spreadsheets: Centralise, Streamline, and Scale with GRC Software
While GRC is often viewed through a compliance lens, its real value lies in enabling better business performance. When risk and governance processes are aligned with strategic goals, GRC becomes a driver of clarity, stability, and growth—not just a regulatory necessity.
A mature GRC programme doesn’t slow the business down—it removes friction. It empowers leadership to explore new markets, onboard critical vendors, and navigate uncertainty with confidence and control.
GRC isn’t just a safeguard—it’s a strategic function that protects revenue, builds trust, and unlocks opportunity.
If you’re hitting the limits of spreadsheets, there’s a better way forward.
A dedicated GRC platform gives you a centralised system to manage risks, actions, audits, and compliance activities—all in one place. Modern solutions like Symbiant offer real-time visibility, custom dashboards, automated reporting, and full accountability—so your team can focus on strategy, not admin.
Whether you’re aiming to reduce risk exposure, satisfy regulators, or drive strategic growth, purpose-built GRC software lays the foundation for smarter, faster decisions.
The Longer You Wait, the Greater the Risk
Delaying investment in modern GRC systems may feel convenient, but it comes at a growing cost. As inefficiencies compound, the risks to your business become harder to ignore. Without the right tools in place, you’re more likely to face:
- Unrecognised or underreported risks that expose the organisation to avoidable threats
- Prolonged audit cycles with more findings, gaps, and remediation delays
- Stalled vendor reviews and sales cycles due to lack of documentation or visibility
- Delayed strategic initiatives as compliance teams struggle to keep pace
- Burnout and attrition among top GRC talent, who are overwhelmed by manual processes, and much more.
Symbiant is The Smart Choice: Affordable, Agile, AI-Ready
Symbiant is designed to be both powerful and accessible, it’s one of the most affordable GRC, Risk Management and Audit platforms available. Symbiant is a world-leading, highly trusted, award-winning GRC and Audit platform—designed to help organisations achieve objectives, reduce risk, and stay resilient with confidence, clarity, and cost-efficiency. Fully modular, intuitive agile, and easy to embed, Symbiant fits effortlessly around your existing structure, simplifying processes, breaking down silos, adapting to your exact requirements, and scaling seamlessly as your needs evolve.
What to Look for in a GRC Solution (and Why Symbiant Stands Out)
Choosing the right GRC, Risk Management and Audit platform isn’t just about ticking compliance boxes, it’s about finding a system that empowers your organisation to manage risk proactively, stay audit-ready, and scale without chaos.
Here’s what to look for in a modern GRC, Risk Management solution, and how Symbiant delivers on every point from only £100 per module/month for unlimited users* :
Centralised & Connected Data
Your risk, audit, and compliance data shouldn’t live in silos. Look for a GRC solution that connects everything in one place.
Symbiant gives you a single source of truth, linking risks, controls, incidents, and audits across modules, eliminating scattered spreadsheets and duplicated effort.
Built-In Automation
Manual tasks are where spreadsheets fall apart. Your GRC tool should automate reminders, workflows, risk scoring, and reporting.
Symbiant automates everything from notifications to reviews and risk updates, freeing up time and reducing the risk of human error.
Manual follow-ups are a thing of the past. Symbian automatically chases overdue items and alerts users when tasks are created, updated, or missed—so nothing falls through the cracks and your team stays ahead of deadlines.
Integrated AI—Not a Chatbot
AI should enhance decision-making, not distract it. Many tools bolt on generic AI chat features, but real GRC value comes from context-aware intelligence.
Symbiant’s built-in AI Assistant is fully integrated across modules—not a chatbot, but a logic-based system trained on real-world GRC and audit data. It helps surface hidden risks, predict cascading issues, and suggest relevant actions—all while ensuring no data is stored, thanks to our temporary cache system for enhanced security and compliance.
Experience Symbiant AI
Real-Time Dashboards & Reporting
Flexibility & Customisation
Your processes are unique. Your GRC software should adapt—not the other way around.
Symbiant is fully configurable, so you can tailor fields, workflows, scoring models, and layouts without any coding.
Proven Performance & Trust
What Our Clients Say After Leaving Spreadsheets Behind
Trusted by risk, compliance, and audit professionals across industries, Symbiant delivers real results. Our clients consistently highlight the time savings, improved accuracy, and peace of mind they’ve gained by switching from spreadsheets to a modern GRC platform.
”A welcome change from spreadsheets – Symbiant holds all of our risk registers, assessments and controls library together in one place with the ability to link risks and incidents.
The tracker and email notification is really useful to help risk owners monitor and manage their risks by self serving. Creating our own custom reports and dashboards eases the process of gathering important MI. A really useful software.”
Simply Business
”Symbiant has revolutionised the way we manage and oversee risk.”
Evolution Money
We wanted to get away from managing our company risks in MS Excel and Share Point, and automate the entire process with improved reporting and email workflow and action management. So we started looking at options.
We reviewed a number of vendors from small start-ups to multinational companies who provided very different products at hugely varied prices.
Our Insurance Broker recommended Symbiant to us as they already use them for Risk Management, so we reached out to them.
Whistl
”The lack of a single source of truth system for audit follow-up was frustrating our team and our internal clients.
Symbiant provided a simple inexpensive solution to our problems. Further when we contacted the Symbiant team about improvements they were very receptive and made some of our suggested improvements happen very quickly. The simplicity and value for money of Symbiant is excellent and perfect for an organisation of our size and maturity.”
ONE ACRE FUND
” Having previously managed all our Corporate risks via spreadsheets we are currently migrating our risk registers onto the Symbiant Risk Management System.
The capabilities of the software are allowing us to considerably enhance the level of risk maturity across the University. It is allowing us to transform the management of our organisational risks to the extent that our Risk Management Policy is now being reviewed to ensure it takes into account the potential of the new software.”
Cardiff Metropolitan University
Symbiant GRC Platform Overview
Symbiant provides a fully modular, highly trusted, easy to use, intelligent platform for Governance, Risk, Compliance, and Audit Management. Each solution group is designed to work seamlessly together—sharing data, logic, and reporting—so your organisation gains unified visibility across all areas of risk.
Risk Management Solutions
Symbiant makes risk management collaborative, dynamic, and data-driven. From registers to workshops, incidents to indicators, every module is designed to help you identify, assess, and mitigate risks with clarity and confidence.
Risk Register Software
Capture and manage all risks in one place, with custom scoring logic, cross-linking to controls, audits, and incidents, and real-time reporting. Designed to align with ISO 31000.
Risk Workshops Software
Enable inclusive, remote, and real-time risk assessments across departments. Anyone—regardless of GRC expertise—can contribute to structured evaluations, supporting engagement and transparency.
Risk Controls and Policies Software
Maintain a live, auditable record of your internal controls and policies. Link them directly to risks, audits, or incidents and track ownership, reviews, and effectiveness over time.
Risk Incident Reporter Software
Log, assign, and investigate incidents and near misses. Each report can be linked to affected risks or controls and escalated with associated actions, ensuring full visibility and accountability.
Questionnaires, Survey, and Assessment Software
Create internal assessments, supplier surveys, and risk evaluations that feed directly into your GRC framework. Ideal for control testing, audits, and cultural assessments.
Key Risk Indicators (KRI) Software
Track and monitor real-time risk trends. Set thresholds, receive alerts, and take action based on KRI performance—keeping you one step ahead of emerging issues.
Governance Software Solutions
Symbiant streamlines the entire audit lifecycle—from planning and fieldwork to reporting and action tracking—giving audit teams the tools they need to deliver assurance with agility and accuracy.
Audit Action Tracker Software
Monitor audit actions across the business. Assign responsibilities, set deadlines, and track resolution in real time, ensuring findings are acted on and never overlooked.
Audit Working Papers Software
Conduct audit fieldwork directly within Symbiant, linking working papers to relevant risks, controls, and previous findings. Create a digital audit trail that’s easy to manage and export.
Compliance Management Solutions
Stay ahead of regulatory demands and internal obligations. Symbiant’s compliance modules help you monitor activity, manage assessments, resolve complaints, and document key actions—all from one central hub.
Complaint Management Module
Log, assign, escalate, and resolve complaints with full traceability. Maintain oversight across departments and link complaints to risks, controls, or actions where necessary.
Compliance Monitoring Software
Track and evidence testing of compliance requirements, regulatory controls, and audit checks. Includes live status dashboards and integrated action tracking.
DPIA Software
Conduct and document Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) with clear workflows, guidance prompts, and evidence capture aligned to GDPR standards.
Service Desk Software
Manage GRC-related service requests and issues with clear routing, action ownership, and response tracking—ideal for handling internal queries or compliance workflows.
SHE Software
Support your Safety, Health, and Environmental obligations with structured incident recording, control monitoring, and compliance tracking built into your wider GRC ecosystem.
Audit Management Solutions
Symbiant brings clarity and control to strategic governance. From business objectives to continuity planning and documentation, our tools ensure structure, alignment, and accountability across leadership functions.
Business Continuity Planning Software
Plan for disruption with tested continuity strategies linked to critical assets, risks, and departments. Ensure recovery and continuity activities are clearly owned and documented.
Business Objectives Software
Align risk management and audits with strategic business goals. Monitor objective progress and link outcomes to risks, KRIs, or incidents to maintain strategic visibility.
Document Management Software
Securely manage your GRC documentation—policies, procedures, manuals—with access control, version tracking, and audit-ready records.
Due Diligence Software
The Due Diligence Module aids in the recording, tracking and completion of Due Diligence assessments quickly and effectively.
Your Central Hub for GRC, Risk, Audit & Compliance Excellence
Discover More in Symbiant’s GRC Knowledge Centre
Looking for even more insights, tools, and practical guidance? Visit the Symbiant GRC Knowledge Centre, your all-in-one hub for governance, risk, compliance (GRC), and audit resources.
Explore our guides, in-depth glossary definitions, industry-specific best practices, and demonstration videos, all organised by industry, organisation size, and compliance framework (including ISO 27001, GDPR, Cyber Essentials, and more).
Whether you’re a charity, SME, or global enterprise, you’ll find tailored content to help you streamline processes, strengthen compliance, and achieve your business objectives, all backed by Symbiant’s award-winning, enterprise-grade GRC, Risk Management & Audit software.
unbeatable pricing
Pricing Disclaimer
* Modules are charged at a standard monthly fee, not on a per-user basis. All users can access each module at any required level. Please note that costs exclude VAT, AI features, and additional modules you may wish to use. User seats are required.