Business Structure & Hierarchy
Model organizational structure, dependencies, and relationships to visualize resilience coverage, risk ownership, and overall enterprise risk posture.
Solution Overview
The Business Structure & Hierarchy solution allows organizations to model their enterprise structure — including business units, processes, systems, and dependencies — to better understand how risk and resilience are distributed across the organization.
By mapping internal hierarchies and external relationships, SmartSuite enables visibility into ownership, accountability, and coverage of key controls and risks.
The solution integrates directly with other Risk Management modules such as Enterprise Risk Management, Operational Risk, and Business Continuity, ensuring that every risk and dependency is tied to a specific entity, process, or owner.
Real-time visualizations show how business units, services, and supporting assets are interconnected — helping leadership identify concentration risks and resilience gaps before they impact operations.
Core Capabilities
SmartSuite’s Business Structure & Hierarchy solution gives organizations a clear, visual framework for managing relationships between people, processes, systems, and risks across the enterprise.
Organizational Modeling
Define entities, departments, and reporting hierarchies across your enterprise. Image: Org chart of departments with assigned owners.
Dependency Mapping
Connect critical services, systems, and processes to visualize interdependencies.
Risk Ownership Alignment
Assign ownership of risks, controls, and mitigation actions to the responsible entity.
Process-to-Risk Linkages
Map business processes directly to associated risks and controls.
Resilience Coverage Visualization
Highlight which business units or processes have incomplete risk or continuity coverage.
Dynamic Dashboards
View heatmaps showing risk concentration by department or entity.
Change Management & Updates
Automatically update ownership structures and dependencies as teams or systems evolve.
The Organizational Mapping Lifecycle
SmartSuite supports a continuous process for maintaining accurate business structure and dependency data — ensuring alignment between governance and real-world operations.
Define Entities & Ownership
Establish the organizational structure and assign responsible owners.
Map Processes & Dependencies
Link key processes, systems, and external partners.
Align Risks & Controls
Connect each entity to relevant risks, controls, and mitigations.
Analyze Coverage
dentify resilience gaps and concentration risks.
Report & Evolve
Generate reports and dashboards showing structure, ownership, and dependency health.
Who Uses This Solution
The Business Structure & Hierarchy solution supports leadership and operational teams responsible for risk ownership, organizational governance, and business continuity planning.
Oversees enterprise-wide risk management, ensuring risks are identified, assessed, and managed in alignment with strategic goals.
Maintains continuity plans, recovery procedures, contact trees, and incident coordination.
Aligns RCSA outputs with process-level risk registers.
Ensures policies align with regulatory frameworks and internal controls.
Provides input on process criticality and operational dependencies.
Connected GRC Ecosystem
The Business Structure & Hierarchy solution connects seamlessly with other SmartSuite GRC modules to ensure that all risks, controls, and dependencies are properly linked to organizational entities and owners.
Modernizing Governance, Risk, and Compliance
Modernize how you manage governance, risk, and compliance with SmartSuite — a unified platform built for today’s connected enterprise.
Artificial Intelligence
SmartSuite's AI generates insights, summarizes complex results, and predicts risks within existing workflows to support proactive decisions.
AI Relationship Insights
Automatically identify patterns and dependency relationships between departments, teams, assets, and processes — highlighting structural gaps or bottlenecks.
AI-powered Org Mapping Summaries
Summarize complex hierarchical structures and provide plain-language explanations of how teams, roles, and processes connect across the organization.
Predictive Impact Modeling
Predict the downstream impact of structural changes (e.g., restructuring, team shifts, vendor changes) on operations, risk exposure, and process continuity.
Automations
Use SmartSuite's no-code engine to eliminate repetitive tasks and ensure accountability across risk operations.
Automated Ownership Updates
Automatically update record ownership, risk owners, approvers, and collaborators when individuals change roles, teams, or reporting structures.
Hierarchy-driven Workflows
Trigger workflows based on organizational structure (e.g., escalate approvals to a department head, notify cross-functional teams when dependencies change).
Change Monitoring & Validation
Automate detection of outdated hierarchy data, missing owners, or disconnected processes — ensuring organizational accuracy at scale.
Integrations
Integrate with the tools your teams use every day. Keep controls, incidents, and risk data in sync through prebuilt connectors and open APIs.
HR & Identity Providers
Integrate with Workday, BambooHR, Okta, Azure AD, or Google Workspace to sync reporting lines, departments, user roles, and employment status.
Process & Asset Systems
Connect with CMDBs, asset management tools, or operational systems to link org structure to applications, equipment, or critical infrastructure.
Org Visualization & BI Tools
Export structure data to visualization platforms like Miro, Lucidchart, or BI tools (Power BI, Tableau) for advanced analysis and presentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions about SmartSuite’s pricing models, plan options, and onboarding programs.
Yes — hierarchy data can be imported from flat files, or level SmartSuite's API to automate integrations with HR or IT systems such as Workday or ServiceNow CMDB.
Yes — dashboards can display risk concentration and coverage by department, process, or region.
Yes — the platform allows you to model interdependencies between services, systems, and teams.
Yes — dependencies identified here feed directly into continuity and resilience planning workflows.
Discover the Power of Connected GRC
Break down silos, improve collaboration, and streamline compliance. SmartSuite helps GRC teams achieve more — with integrated data, automation, and a shared source of truth across the organization.