Guide to IBM OpenPages V8.3: What is new and what has changed

OpenPages with Watson by IBM is one of the best-integrated governance, risk, and compliance platforms that enable businesses to manage risk and compliance challenges. It has core modules that target risk and compliance domains such as operational risk, financial controls management, internal audit, policy management, IT governance, model risk governance, third-party risk management, regulatory compliance management, business continuity management, and data privacy management.With 8.3.0 (up to the latest release – 8.3.0.2), IBM has released several exciting new capabilities such as integration of ‘WalkMe,’ new features in Task Focussed UI, enhanced Questionnaires, a new module for Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG), and many more improvements.

The top new capabilities at a glance

• WalkMe integration
• Administrative features in Task-Focused UI
• New features added for Questionnaires
• Enhancement in Trend charts
• New module – Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG)
• Individual module enhancements

Let’s go through them in detail one by one.

WalkMe Integration

Integrating WalkMe with OpenPages enables organizations to incorporate custom content and provide users with personalized ‘Getting Started’ experiences. By utilizing guided tours, feature explanations, and embedded resources, WalkMe enhances OpenPages adoption, allowing users to maximize its benefits.WalkMe will help smoothen user onboarding with self-help guided tours. Organizations can use embedded registry settings to enable WalkMe and establish a connection with their specific WalkMe JavaScript snippets. It’s important to note that a separate license for WalkMe is necessary for implementing custom solutions.

Enhanced Task-Focussed UI

The Task-Focused User Interface (UI) in OpenPages now offers a range of administrative features previously only available in the Standard UI. Also, Standard UI has been dropped from the platform. The new features include:

• A new view that allows users to display all fields and associations linked with an object, regardless of the activated task view. Users can also customize the field order for Microsoft Excel export and import.
• Users can now publish reports generated in IBM Cognos within OpenPages.
• Configuration options for global search functionality are now available.
• Users can definethe recursive object level and field exclusion settings.
• The Task-Focused UI provides visibility into background processes, allowing users to monitor ongoing tasks.

Reimagined Questionnaire Capabilities

The questionnaire authoring and answering experience has also been revamped to align with the OpenPages user interface. The updated capabilities for questionnaire authoring and answering include the following:

• Up to four levels of dynamic questions can be included in a questionnaire.
• Questions are automatically numbered, facilitating easy reference.
• Users can rearrange sections and questions using drag and drop.
• Each question can be marked as required, ensuring complete responses.
• Review mode presents scoring information clearly, enabling faster review processes.
• Low-scoring answers automatically generate issues for further attention.
• Questions can be mapped to specific controls or regulatory requirements for tracking and compliance purposes.

Trend charts

The OpenPages administrator can now include trend charts in task views based on related objects’ data points, allowing users to access historical information through embedded charts with just a few clicks.

New Module – Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG)

Streamlining adherence to sustainability standards is made effortless with IBM OpenPages Risk Management for ESG module. It provides organizations with the necessary tools to govern their ESG programs, assess operational risks related to environmental, social, and governance factors, meet sustainability standards, and develop strategies for fostering sustainable business growth.Key Features:

• ESG Objective Management:Effortlessly set and monitor progress toward achieving ESG goals and objectives.
• ESG Risk Assessment: Identify, analyze, mitigate, manage, and monitor risks associated with environmental, social, and governance factors.
• ESG Compliance and Disclosure Management: Seamlessly coordinate assessment cycles for compliance and disclosure requirements across the organization.
• ESG Materiality Assessment: Create, distribute, collect, and generate reports on ESG surveys throughout the organization using the integrated Questionnaire capability.

Individual Module Enhancements

Outlined below are the numerous improvements that have been implemented in various modules:

Operational Risk Management module

OpenPages Operational Risk Management module integrates document and process management with a monitoring and decision-support system, providing organizations with a streamlined approach to analyzing, managing, and mitigating risk. The solution automates the measurement and monitoring of operational risk by consolidating various risk data, such as risk and control self-assessments, loss events, scenario analysis, external losses, and key risk indicators (KRI), into a unified and cohesive platform.The enhancements in the OpenPages Operational Risk Management module encompass several aspects:

• Aligns values with the latest Operational Risk Data eXchange (ORX) data definitions to ensure compatibility with industry standards.
• Improved workflows and calculations designed to support various use cases of Operational Risk Management, including KRI, KPIs, RCSA, Control Testing, and Loss Events.
• Updated views that align with processes and workflow activities, ensuring a more intuitive and seamless experience.
• Enhancements to the OpenPages Operational Risk Management Master Dashboard, providing an upgraded and enhanced user interface.
• Cognos Reports update – style, content, and dashboards.

Policy Management module

A policy-driven module that aims to streamline and simplify the complex and costly nature of policy management and compliance with multiple regulatory requirements and corporate policies. Utilizing a centralized document repository, this module offers a holistic perspective on policy management and regulatory compliance, providing a clear understanding of the policies required to govern policy content, structure, and regulatory obligations. With the help of this module, organizations can effectively manage and monitor compliance activities through a comprehensive set of integrated features.The enhancements in the OpenPages Policy Management module include the following:

• New workflows, calculations, and user guidance facilitate policy management’s review and approval process.
• New Policy Owner Dashboard, explicitly designed to support the review, approval, and workflow activities related to policies.
• Updated Policy Dashboard and views, incorporating detailed guidance to assist oversight functions and support seamless workflows.

Financial Controls Management module

Financial Controls Management module reduces the time and resource costs associated with ongoing compliance with financial reporting regulations. It facilitates this by offering flexible automation through powerful workflow capabilities, calculations, and decision-support tools. These tools include interactive dashboards and dimensional reporting, enabling CEOs, CFOs, managers, process owners, control owners, independent auditors, and audit committees to comply with financial reporting regulations efficiently and effectively.The enhancements in the OpenPages Financial Controls Management module include the following:

• An updated dashboard for oversight functions, explicitly catering to management involved in the SOX certification process.
• An updated certification dashboard for control or process owners.
• Improved views with visualizations, data relationships, and user guidance to support existing control and process certification workflows.

IT Governance module

The IBM OpenPages IT Governance module helps in the alignment of IT services, risks, and policies with business strategy and operational standards. It allows organizations to manage internal IT controls and risks based on the business processes they support. By unifying multiple silos of IT risk and compliance, the IT Governance module enhances the visibility of private data, provides better decision support, and ultimately improves corporate performance.The enhancements in the IT Governance module include integration with RiskLens, enabling users to push records to RiskLens for risk quantification analysis and bring back loss exposure metrics established from the analysis into OpenPages for platform-wide utilization.

Internal Audit Management

The internal Audit Management module offers internal auditors a tailored view into organizational governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), facilitating their role alongside broader risk and compliance management activities. By providing automation features such as workflows, calculations, meaningful dashboard visualizations, custom views, and reports, Internal Audit Management module enhances the efficiency and standardization of independent internal risk and compliance assessments.This module fully integrates with financial controls management, IT governance, policy management, and operational risk management modules. It provides the internal audit team the flexibility to operate as a fully integrated partner with business stakeholders or independently or anywhere in between, based on the specific needs of the audit department or a particular audit project.The Internal Audit Management module enhancements include an updated Internal Audit Dashboard for oversight functions to support existing workflows, improved views with user guidance, validation rules to ensure data integrity, and support for the audit closing process.

Model Risk Governance module

The Model Risk Governance module supports organizations in centralizing and organizing their model inventory. It enables organizations to organize, document, and maintain an enterprise-wide inventory of models while tracking associated risks in a centralized location.The enhancements in the OpenPages Model Risk Governance module include the following:

• Updated object model to accommodate AI model use cases.
• Improved standard views and workflows.
• Updated standard calculations for the model risk scorecard and metric value collection
• Integration with IBM Watson® OpenScale.

Regulatory Compliance Management module

The Regulatory Compliance Management module assists organizations in breaking down regulations into a catalog of requirements, evaluating their impact on the business, and creating actionable tasks.OpenPages Regulatory Compliance Management enhancements focus on improving regulatory compliance assessments through new workflows, new calculations for aggregating compliance assessment information, and introducing new objects for 1. Storing compliance assessment metrics and records, 2. Ascent supporting information.

Third-Party Risk Management module

The Third-Party Risk Management module assists organizations in assessing and analyzing risks associated with their vendors. It provides transparency into operational and security activities for vendors and subcontractors, offering a scalable way to manage third-party compliance and risk.The enhancements in the OpenPages Third Party Risk Management module include the following:

• Questionnaire enhancements for conducting vendor assessments.
• Workflows for vendor lifecycle management, from selection to termination.
• Enhanced Supply Wisdom integration for event monitoring of vendors and associated locations, with added location risk factors.
• Seamless integration with RiskRecon and RapidRatings, allows users to import vendor information, scores, and ratings directly into the platform. Two new object types have been introduced to support this integration: RiskRecon Ratings and RapidRatings Ratings.
• New dashboards that include dedicated panels for RapidRatings and RiskRecon, providing a consolidated view of vendor risk and rating data. To manage these integrations effectively, new profiles have been introduced, namely VRM RiskRecon Master and OpenPages RapidRatings Master.
• New role templates have been created to streamline user access and permissions, including TPRM RapidRatings – All Permissions and TPRM RapidRatings – All Data – Limited Admin.

Business Continuity Management module

The business Continuity Management module helps organizations maintain predefined operational continuity during or after a disruptive event. It allows organizations to identify risks, critical business services and processes, perform dependency mappings, create business continuity plans, conduct regular testing, and document action plans for continual improvement.The enhancements in the OpenPages Business Continuity Management module include the following:

• A fresh service object and workflows for finding essential business services and determining impact tolerances.
• Addition of scenario analysis object and workflows for testing the recovery of essential business services within established impact tolerances.
• Introduction of KRI and KPI objects, along with related calculations and workflows, for monitoring threats, dependencies, and changes to criticality.
• New calculations for setting and comparing recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives.
• Integration with Supply Wisdom for alert ingestion and risk metrics that impact supporting vendors and locations.

Data Privacy Management module

The Data Privacy Management module aids organizations in complying with data privacy regulations by providing visibility into private data and enabling compliance efforts. It supports Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs), Chief Data Officers (CDOs), Chief Commercial Officers (CCOs), and other privacy and compliance professionals.The enhancements in the OpenPages Data Privacy Management module include the following:

• Improved standard workflows for Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) and Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).
• Addition of new fields for data assets.
• Enhanced questionnaire experience.
• Updated standard views and dashboard.

To Summarize…IBM OpenPages with Watson V8.3 introduces various user interface enhancements to improve the user experience and provide additional functionality for risk and compliance initiatives. These enhancements include a redesigned questionnaire capability, integration with WalkMe, and an expanded solution set. These updates aim to assist organizations in effectively managing their risk and compliance efforts.iTech has a pool of experienced and certified GRC experts and consultants. With more than 20 years of experience in business consulting, we have developed proven frameworks and methodologies that ensure faster time-to-value, adhering to project budgets and timelines.