Out with the Old, In with the New

A little over a decade ago, a busy day for me consisted of going to school, algebra, horseback riding lessons, and various other after school activities. After family dinner, I logged onto my computer with ambitions of using Instant Messenger to talk with my friends only to be met with that ear-piercing sound of dial-up internet. If I was lucky, I was the only one trying to connect to our lone landline and would slowly, but surely have access to the World Wide Web.

We now live in a world of WiFi and 4G. In the time it took my school years to connect to AOL, I can look at the most recent NERC news, check out the highlights from last night’s Orioles game, and watch a YouTube video titled “Evolution of Technology.”

With technology rapidly progressing, companies must keep up before they find themselves kicked offline. The days of maintaining compliance records on an Excel spreadsheet are over. The question of when a spreadsheet will fail replaces if a spreadsheet will fail. In order to protect the company, process management needs to transition from a manual process to an automated process.

Regulatory compliance software offers a solution to present uniform and easily accessible data for auditors when they come. Take note that I said when, not if. In the journey from a manual to an automated process, companies will recognize that regardless of the tool they decide upon, a commitment to reevaluation and reality must be made.

Reevaluation requires everyone from senior level management to ground level employees to examine the current policies and procedures. Entering bad policies into compliance software will lead to faster, more accurate failure.

After implementing a risk management software “properly”, results will not be instantaneous. Dedication to compliance education and the transition must be present to yield positive results. To all, I say out with those free AOL trial CDS and spreadsheets and in with LTE and regulatory compliance software.

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