Galvanize Virtual Summit 2020, our first-ever online customer conference, wrapped on Friday, April 24. While we missed the epic dance parties and face time with our friends and customers, we still feel it’s worth raising a glass (or two).

We did what many organizations have been forced to do during the COVID-19 crisis—pivot. When our in-person Summit was canceled, our teams quickly got to work on creating the best virtual conference. And in an epically short amount of time—for more than 1,500 attendees.

They did an amazing job!

The feedback from our customers, speakers, and partners included words like engaging, informative, innovative, and exciting. Attendees were enthusiastic to discover what’s ahead for Galvanize and the GRC industry.

Here’s a look at some of the highlights and key takeaways.

Agility is no longer optional

Today’s GRC professionals need to be agile, and we were reminded of this again and again as our speakers took the virtual stage.

Galvanize Virtual Summit 2020 officially kicked off with a welcome by Laurie Schultz, our President & CEO; Dan Zitting, our Chief Product & Strategy Officer; and Carolyn Devine Saint, Chief Audit Executive of the University of Virginia. Laurie and Dan walked our attendees through the latest HighBond features, including our COVID-19 Toolkit. We created it to help risk management professionals navigate risk, business continuity, and communications—creating a single source of truth to drive decision-making during a time when there’s no playbook.

On Friday afternoon, Darrell Mathews and Bronwyn Jesse from the City of Lethbridge shared their thoughts on being agile when it comes to data analytics in government. They offered these key takeaways for internal control teams:

• Be comfortable with discontinuing or revamping analytics if they’re not adding value
• Engage others in an iterative approach
• Continuously review existing analytics and technology.

Also on Friday afternoon, our Client Partner, Chad Wood, joined Tom Valiquette of Atrium Health to talk about building a scalable and flexible compliance data program, where customers can easily find KPIs, KRIs, and KCIs in their areas of responsibility.

Tom’s advice when designing your compliance data program: “Start with the end in mind” and ask:

• Who are the key customers?
• What tools are the key customers going to need?
• Where should the data results, tools, and output be available?
• How will key customers interact with the tools and data?

Our customers are leading the way in uniting GRC

Throughout the summit, we had a number of great customer presenters who are using our HighBond platform to unite their teams, put their data to work, and create a single source of truth. Two of those presenters included Robert Ng-A-Fook and Sarah Morejon of Office Depot. They shared their internal audit team’s journey to unite five departments with HighBond, which included harmonizing controls across the organization.

Daniel Doyle, Director of Audit at ProMedica, told us how to wow the C-suite with impactful dashboards powered by ACL Robotics. Joined by Adrian Poon, Manager of the Advisory and Consulting Services practices at Galvanize, Daniel shared how his compelling dashboards in HighBond raised his team’s profile to become sought-after business partners. He also showed us ways for teams to forge stronger relationships with organizational leaders by giving them easily understood, accessible, and actionable data-driven insights.

Automation is now everywhere

Renee Murphy of Forrester led a much-anticipated session on using machine learning and AI to automate compliance. She shared some priceless advice and real-world examples of implementing AI, along with amazing energy and enthusiasm.

“You can’t be afraid of the outcome. You need to have a culture where if you didn’t find something, you didn’t look hard enough. That level of transparency has to be in your DNA.”

Learn more about AI and machine learning for governance in our eBook.

We also heard from our Technical Product Manager, Ruben Rejon, and Senior Product Manager, Phil Lim. These two gentlemen joined forces to give attendees an in-depth look at ACL Robotics, from cloud capabilities to training a machine learning model to predict what might be fraud, errors, or opportunities.

And finally, our friend and customer, Curtis Josey, Data Analytics Manager at Cornell University, delivered a great session on using the data-driven analytics and robotic process automation capabilities of ACL Robotics to transform IT risk assurance. To really evolve your IT risk assurance, Curtis suggests you:

• Find champions in your organization
• Innovate with a “fail forward” approach
• Promote analytics capabilities
• Embrace transparency and agility.

While we can’t share every value-packed session from the two-day summit, we want to thank all of our presenters for offering their experiences and expertise. It’s so inspiring to see and hear firsthand how Galvanize is helping our customers stay agile, embrace ambiguity, and unite GRC.

And of course, a humongous shout out to every attendee. This event wouldn’t be what it is without you. We can’t wait to reconnect in person and see everyone at Galvanize Summit 2021 in Houston!