Using automation to implement compliance management the right way

Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States Department of Justice gave a speech to commence Compliance Week 2018 and his focus was on the right way to implement compliance. He stated that “compliance should not be treated as separate and distinct from other business goals.” This is an important insight from a person who has decades of experience dealing with compliance management issues.

Creating congruence between compliance management and business goals

What Rod Rosenstein was talking about is the wrong approach taken by many companies towards compliance management. Compliance is often perceived as something the compliance department needs to worry about, and is not considered when business goals are being defined.

Anyone who works in compliance can immediately tell the problem with this approach. Compliance should be a basic business goal for any company, especially companies in the financial sector. Non-compliance directly affects the business goals of any organization in the financial sector. Non-compliance results in fines, which directly affect the bottom-line of the business. There are far-reaching consequences as well. There is always the possibility that customers will have a harder time trusting the organization once they find out about non-compliance issues.

The solution is to ensure that compliance isn’t something that only the compliance department worries about. Compliance should be a clear goal, the same way profitability and sustainability are, when business goals are being set. This means that there needs to be a change in the culture of the organization. However, in order to successfully inculcate such a culture, organizations need to equip their employees with the right tools.

Automation’s key role in helping compliance

Managing compliance manually means that every compliance task required considerable administrative work. These are non-value adding tasks which the other departments are not equipped to deal with. This leads to the wrong compliance culture, where compliance is seen as an ‘’annoyance’’, instead of a necessary business function.

Using the right compliance management solution allows organizations to implement an organization-wide compliance culture. Automation based compliance management solutions end up taking care of almost all the non-value adding tasks and gives the compliance department time to truly focus on compliance within the organization.

More importantly, automation based compliance solutions end up allowing every department to do their part in ensuring compliance. The people designing the business processes simply need to map the business processes to the regulations, policies, and procedures that will be affected by it. This will allow management to easily see any compliance conflicts that may crop up, right at the designing stage of the business process.

The compliance department can also see which of their policies, procedures, regulations, and rules are being affected by the new business ideas. They can give an input during the design process and make other departments aware of any upcoming issues.

Compliance Management Solutions re-invent the business culture

In organizations where, manual systems are being used, once other departments are done with their work they send it to the compliance department. The compliance department then makes their concerns known and action is taken accordingly. This is a slow process, one that is prone to errors because something may be missed in all of the accumulated work the compliance department has to investigate.

In organizations where automated compliance management systems exist; the process is very different. All of management can see all compliance issues. Other departments can check the mapping done within the compliance management system, to see what a change in the way they work will do to the compliance status of the organization.

Instead of designing business ideas and products around compliance or having compliance as an afterthought, being compliant is built into the DNA of the product or business idea, thanks to compliance management solutions. Any organization that is struggling with compliance issues needs to look at what the right solution can do for their business.

If you want to see what such a system can do for your organization, get in touch with us and we will arrange a live demo of Predict360 for you. Want to explore Predict360 yourself and see how it will benefit your compliance workflow? Get in touch with us and start your 30-day free trial.

About the company

360factors, Inc. (Austin, TX) helps companies improve business performance by reducing risk and ensuring compliance. Predict360, its flagship software product, vertically integrates regulations and requirements, policies and procedures management, risks and controls, audit management and inspections, and on-line training and qualifications, in a single cloud-based platform based on artificial intelligence.

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