How Automated Compliance Can Reduce the Cost of Compliance

Corporate compliance is not a new idea; for many years, organizations everywhere have had to comply with certain rules and standards to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. Those rules might be defined internally by the company’s compliance team or by an external party such as a regulatory agency — but either way, they are rules that the company must follow.

An effective compliance function assures that the organization complies with both internal and external rules. The compliance program also prevents undesirable situations or practices within the company such as fraud, abuse, harassment, or discrimination that disrupt operations and damage the company’s reputation.

Enforcing compliance increases operational and behavioral consistency. It also helps to prevent violations and reduces errors. Ultimately, it helps the organization to achieve its objectives and establish a strong competitive position.

That said, achieving (and then maintaining) compliance is not easy. Even a small deviation from compliance policies increases the risk of a security breach, regulatory enforcement, reputational damage, and customer dissatisfaction.

Moreover, as the regulatory landscape evolves, it can be hard for organizations to understand where laws have changed and what they should do to keep up with new compliance obligations. An automated compliance system can effectively address all these challenges.

What Is Automated Compliance?

As stated earlier, compliance helps organizations to guide behaviors, prevent undesirable events, and achieve business goals. Compliance is also essential to manage risk, protect business-critical assets from theft or compromise, and safeguard the company’s reputation and financial stability.

And all of this is easier to do with compliance management and automation tools. Compliance automation is about replacing manual compliance processes — typically spreadsheets, and email-based communication — with automated workflows. The right compliance solutions eliminate time-consuming, resource-intensive manual processes to ease the organization’s path towards compliance.

Benefits of Automated Compliance

Compliance is not an optional exercise; businesses must do it. Still, the regulatory landscape evolves constantly, with old regulations updated and new regulations cropping up with increasing frequency. Companies are constantly updating their policies, procedures, and other practices to assure appropriate behaviors and to provide evidence of such behaviors to customers, regulators, and other stakeholders.

As all those rules emerge or change, companies struggle to keep up using manual processes and legacy tools. These older technologies make it difficult to keep up with these rules, and even harder to comply with them. This is where compliance automation enters the picture.

Adapt to changing regulations with ease. Automated compliance tools actively track and adapt to evolving regulations. Leveraging AI and machine learning, they assure that your systems align with the latest requirements, promptly alerting to any discrepancies. This approach not only keeps you ahead of regulatory changes but also significantly reduces the risk of costly non-compliance.

Streamlining the compliance process. Automation transforms the compliance lifecycle into a seamless process. By integrating automated workflows and predefined rules, it eliminates tedious administrative tasks, allowing your organization to navigate the complex compliance landscape more efficiently and reliably.

Alleviating workload on compliance teams. The tools autonomously gather and organize compliance-related data and documentation, tasks that typically consume considerable time and resources. By automating these tasks, your team’s workload is reduced substantially, allowing them to focus on more strategic compliance issues.

Centralized compliance management. Advanced software consolidates compliance efforts into a unified platform, offering a comprehensive view of your organization’s compliance status. This centralization streamlines processes like evidence collection, control implementation, and communication, enhancing efficiency and reducing the risk of errors or omissions.

Enhanced compliance reporting. Automated tools generate timely, accurate compliance reports based on real-time data. These reports are crucial for informed decision-making, responding to audits, and demonstrating your organization’s compliance status to stakeholders.

Additional advantages of automation in compliance

• Less chance of human error, enhancing the accuracy of compliance positioning.
• Consistent application of policies and standards across the entire organization.
• A complete overview of compliance, highlighting potential gaps and blind spots.
• A stronger culture of accountability, speeding up the compliance process and eliminating blame shifting.
• Streamlined data collection, documentation, and control implementation.
• Easier scalability in your compliance program, to accommodate growth and change.
• Lowers overall cost of compliance thanks to optimized efficiency and less need for extensive manual labor.

Compliance automation is not just a tool for maintaining standards; it’s a strategic asset that propels your organization towards a more efficient, accurate, and resilient compliance posture.

Why are compliance burdens rising?

Compliance burdens have increased across many industries worldwide in recent years. This trend is a response to a confluence of factors that have reshaped the business landscape. Here’s an exploration into why compliance demands are on the rise and what that means for businesses and industries.

1. Stricter regulations and penalties. Governments and international bodies are imposing stricter regulations with heftier penalties. The fear of reputational damage and financial loss has propelled organizations to prioritize compliance.
2. Increased transparency and accountability. Businesses operate under increased scrutiny in the digital age. Consumers and stakeholders demand transparency and ethical conduct, pressing companies to adhere strictly to regulatory standards.
3. Globalization of business. As companies expand across borders, they encounter a complex web of regional and international laws. Operating globally necessitates a higher compliance rate to avoid cross-border legal complications.
4. Enhanced risk management. There’s a growing understanding that non-compliance is a significant risk to business operations Companies recognize that compliance is crucial for risk mitigation and long-term sustainability.
5. Corporate governance initiatives. There’s a shift towards better governance practices, with boards and executives being held more accountable for compliance issues. This is driving a culture of compliance at all levels of the organization.
6. Sector-specific regulations. Certain industries, such as finance, healthcare, and technology, face more stringent and evolving regulations. Companies in these sectors have no choice but to elevate their compliance efforts.
7. Consumer activism. Consumers are increasingly aligning their purchasing choices with their ethical values. Companies that fail to comply with ethical standards risk losing their customer base to more compliant competitors.
8. Reputation as a competitive advantage. A strong compliance record is becoming a badge of distinction in the market. Companies use their compliance status to gain trust and competitive advantage.
9. Learning from the past. The rise in high-profile compliance failures has served as a lesson for many. Companies are more active in their compliance efforts, learning from the mistakes of others.

Companies are rising to meet the challenges of these new compliance obligations. This is good; it’s a shift towards more ethical, transparent, and responsible business practices. While the journey towards full compliance is ongoing and challenging, the collective move in this direction reflects a broader commitment to doing business the right way, benefitting not just the companies but their stakeholders and society at large.

How Automated Compliance Reduces Compliance Costs

Innovative approaches to automation can reduce your compliance costs in numerous ways. These approaches can simplify compliance processes, drive greater efficiency, and ultimately reduce the costs of compliance.

For example, tools based on robotic process automation (RPA), natural language processing (NLP), and optical character recognition (OCR) technologies automatically collect, sort, and understand regulatory changes; and map those changes to appropriate business areas. These capabilities save a lot of time for compliance analysts, which then reduces costs for the organization.

Likewise, AI-based tools can build automated reports after reviewing unstructured regulatory data and defining reporting requirements. Consequently, analysts don’t have to review regulations manually, interpret them, or write code to retrieve required data.

Automation can also help organizations to develop a robust internal monitoring infrastructure and dashboards. That, in turn, helps to drive better security outcomes. These features also allow organizations to respond more quickly to changing compliance standards and frameworks.

Some other ways automated tools can simplify compliance and reduce costs are:

• AI bots can create marketing collateral compliant with regulatory requirements.
• AI-based transaction monitoring systems minimize false-positive compliance notifications (that is, warning a compliance staffer that a transaction seems suspicious, when in fact the transaction isn’t) and reduce review costs.
• Automation speeds up document collection, database checks, and due diligence checks.
• It allows teams to store and manage evidence centrally, to reduce audit preparation time and costs.

Future-proofing your business with automated compliance management

Automated compliance management isn’t just a tool; it’s a strategic advantage that can significantly benefit businesses of all sizes by assuring that they stay ahead of risks. Here’s how organizations across the spectrum can leverage this technology.

Small to Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs)

1. Cost efficiency. Automated compliance reduces the need for extensive legal teams and consultants, making it a cost-effective solution for SMBs operating with tighter budgets.
2. Focus on core business. By automating routine compliance tasks, SMBs can focus their resources on growth and innovation rather than the complexities of compliance.
3. Scalability. As SMBs grow, their compliance needs become more complex. Automated systems scale with your business, so that you’re always covered.

Large Businesses

1. Risk mitigation. For larger businesses, the stakes are higher. Automated compliance helps in identifying and mitigating risks actively, protecting the business from potential fines and reputational damage.
2. Efficiency at scale. Large businesses can benefit from the efficiency that automation brings, managing and streamlining compliance processes across various departments and even global offices.
3. Data-driven insights. Automated systems provide valuable insights and analytics, helping large businesses to make informed decisions and stay ahead of regulatory changes.

Enterprises

1. Global compliance management. Enterprises operating on a global scale can assure consistent compliance across different regions, navigating through various local laws and regulations efficiently.
2. Integration with enterprise systems. Automated compliance can be seamlessly integrated with existing enterprise systems (say, systems of a smaller company you acquire), providing a holistic view of compliance and risk across the entire organization.
3. Strategic advantage. In an era where trust and compliance are competitive differentiators, enterprises can leverage automation to build trust with customers, partners, and regulators, enhancing their market position.

Automated compliance management does more than help you meet regulatory requirements. By adopting this forward-thinking approach, businesses of all sizes can not only safeguard their operations and position themselves for sustainable growth and success in the future.

Make Compliance Automation Work for You with RiskOptics ZenGRC

Harness the power of compliance automation with ZenGRC. Our platform turns the tedious tasks of compliance into a streamlined, manageable process. 

ZenGRC’s intelligent automation features help you identify risks, manage documentation, and assure that you’re always audit-ready. With customized workflows and real-time insights, you’re not just meeting compliance standards; you’re setting new benchmarks for efficiency and accuracy. 

Let ZenGRC transform your compliance strategy into a dynamic asset, empowering you to focus on growing your business while staying confidently compliant.

Schedule a demo to see what ZenGRC can do for you!