New software and tools designed to deal with tasks involving risk and compliance management are available via a Microsoft and BearingPoint collaboration. The BearingPoint Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance (EGRC) is a solution that has at its foundation Microsoft technology, namely, Office SharePoint Server 2007, offering a complete risk-based compliance product set up, in the vision of its developers to not impact the level of profit for customers. This while helping highlight problem risk-aspects, kick compliance up a notch and identify, evaluate and resolve shortcomings in terms of control.

"Initially developed for the public sector, the risk-based compliance solution now addresses the business-critical risk and compliance management needs of our enterprise clients across a number of industries," explained Brian Scott, vice president of Worldwide Industries, Microsoft. The Redmond company revealed that while the solution can be indeed tailored to a variety of industries, the initial marketing focus will be on government agencies, as well as on members of the pharmaceutical, energy and financial services industries.

J.R. Reagan, vice president and managing director, Global Risk, Compliance and Security, BearingPoint applauded the collaboration with Microsoft and the building of a solution capable of permitting organizations to handle compliance and risk management, while not increasing their overall costs. BearingPoint Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance uses a system of alerts and analytics in order to ensure that the metrics associated with high levels of risk and the compliance indicators are at optimal values.

"The global competitive environment continues to become more challenging, and the competitive pressure is substantially increased by the need to meet more demanding regulatory requirements. To help meet global competitive and regulatory challenges, we have teamed up with BearingPoint to develop a solution that provides the seamless communications, connections and collaboration needed to break down today's barriers between operations and compliance," Scott added.