Not too long ago, the onset of tight budgets sparked a lot of worry at companies about how the internal investment dollars would be divided up.

The debate raged about whether to fund existing programs or invest in new ones. The conventional wisdom was that compliance and risk management projects would remain somewhat safe from the budget cutters, given the regulatory and prosecutorial environments. But as IT and other budgets remain tight and as the regulatory imperative remains intense, is this conventional wisdom holding up?

A recently commissioned report by Forrester Research asked executives from large companies to name their top priorities for 2012. Complying with government regulations came in “an uninspiring 10th.” This suggests that compliance managers “looking for executive sponsorship of their efforts may find themselves up against a long list of other initiatives with higher visibility and support.”

The survey also found that 18 percent of business decision makers say their teams use risk and compliance software on a frequent basis, and less than 40 percent say their teams have any plans to use such tools in 2012. So if you are a GRC or compliance manager, this is what you are up against. The marketing challenge is interesting.

So does this bode ill for GRC software in 2012? It's a decent question, but not really answerable. The same study found that GRC professionals aimed to focus on the following: Creating a culture of compliance, getting executive buy-in, establishing accountability and getting general employee buy-in. Solutions will likely be cast as ideal for these functions.

For more:
- here’s the study

Related articles:
The next step in GRC
Big GRC trends for 2012