Ketan Dholakia, Managing Partner, Maclear Global
It’s a no brainer that risk management is the preeminent safety net for businesses of all sizes and shapes. But with the increasingly complex business operations, sweeping regulatory changes, digital disruptions, and nimble competitors, mitigating risks has become more challenging than ever. Thus, today, businesses need a reliable governance, risk and compliance (GRC) partner who can understand both their business processes and the dynamic risk environment in which they operate. One such partner is Maclear Global (“Maclear”). Maclear truly understands the industry-specific business processes and enables organizations to identify, assess, monitor, and holistically manage risks through a structured automated approach. The pioneering company provides a full suite of GRC solutions and services that include everything from risk advisory, their GRC software suite, solution design and implementation, Sherpa services (done-for-you risk activities), and training and awareness.
The Fascinating Story Behind Maclear Global’s Inception
The idea of Maclear was born when two friends, Ketan Dholakia and Depeche Elliot, decided to embark on their childhood dream of starting a business together. While Depeche had a background in Audit and Corporate Finance with firsthand experience in managing risk and compliance, Ketan had the technical and consulting background in creating and implementing GRC solutions. Having such complementary skills, and an aligned vision and goal, they decided to take the plunge and start a meaningful venture to help businesses mitigate business risk. But then came the question—“What to name the company?” One of their most cherished childhood memories while growing up together in Malawi, Africa was frequenting and having great fun at a resort called Cape Maclear. Hence, in reminiscence of the good old days, they named it “Maclear”. Today, under the indomitable leadership of Ketan and Depeche, Maclear has come a long way since its inception in 2010 and has become a global organization.
An In-depth Look into Maclear’s Winning Approach
While there are many factors that carved the success story of Maclear, Ketan emphasizes on four critical factors. First, it focuses on helping businesses by freeing up resources and bringing efficiency and automation to every aspect of a business process.
“Automation enables the organization to strategically utilize resources for risk management activities instead of spending time in collecting, collating and verifying the data,” says Ketan.
Second, the company strives to reassure businesses that they have actionable data by taking away the uncertainty posed by a lack of data integrity, data duplication, and ineffective access to data. Third, Maclear believes in empowering their customers by imparting as much of Maclear’s knowledge to them to make their jobs easier and this results in every engagement becoming a trusted partnership. Last, and the most important factor, is Maclear’s GRC software solution – it is designed to be extremely user friendly. Having much of the functionality built-in, the software enables customers to experience immediate efficiency (in some cases over 60%).
Delivering Comprehensive Solutions for Risk Management
Maclear’s comprehensive software solution helps businesses reduce compliance costs, mitigate potential fines and penalties while continuously monitoring their business risks. It enables effective monitoring in the form of dashboards, macro-level analysis, and automated workflows for reporting and assessments, The flexible and modular design of the solution allows clients to start at any point in their GRC journey based on their immediate needs and maturity; underpinned by a streamlined agile implementation process that enables Maclear to build, test, and deliver the solutions on time and within budget to their clients.
To further maximize the benefits of the solution for its clients’ business processes, the expert training teams at Maclear offer training programs where they impart best practice fundamentals of GRC and software know-how. Finally, its done-for-you Sherpa services help clients to rapidly operationalize their GRC program and automation. Maclear’s uniqueness stems from its great work culture and strong team that is steeped in organizational excellence and unwavering commitment to customer success.
Strengthening Customer Relationship with Top-Notch Service
With its customer-centric solutions, Maclear has attained a unique edge in the market and its increasing customer base is certainly a testament to that. Today, the company has customers from varied industries including but not limited to, financial services, healthcare, energy, education, and logistics.
“Most customers start small with one or two modules to address their immediate need, however, once they become familiar with the solution and see the value add, most of them upgrade to the full suite,” shares Ketan.
Maclear’s truly integrated risk management program covers everything from 3rd party risk to business continuity risk to business process risk to showing compliance for any regulatory requirements they may have, and everything in-between.
He adds, “We offer the most flexible solution in the industry so that our clients only pay for what they need.”
Continues to Ensure Customer Success while Fostering Partnership
Over the years Maclear has witnessed rapid growth and success including outside its home base in the USA for its award winning GRC solution. But, not content with resting on its laurels, the company aspires to further enhance its services and foster partnerships to better serve its customers.
“Our focus in helping our customers succeed in their GRC maturity with automation, has enabled us to grow at a rapid pace and we see this trend continuing. Our strategic partnerships have worked well, and we continue to look for good partners with near term focus on South East Asia as well as South Africa,” asserts Ketan.
Currently, the company is working on finalizing a couple of partnerships in India and also planning a new product release at the end of May which has already positioned it on Gartner’s “Vendors to Watch” list. It believes that this release, named Kaizen Evo, will truly take a client through an evolution process in GRC in digestible steps.
