No matter how proficient a compliance professional you may be, the deck is stacked against you if you are not automating your ethics and compliance program in the same ways other functional groups are automating their recurring responsibilities.
Without automation, a compliance officer works through a patchwork of spreadsheets, paper files and forms, and manual email processes.
As your business grows and your program matures, manual-intensive processes will cap your efficiency, cause you to focus on mundane routine tasks rather than adding strategic value to the organization, and prevent you from meeting the standards required by an ever-increasing strict regulatory environment.
Compliance programs carry the weight of protecting organizations from legal, financial and reputational damage while also providing a platform for ethical performance. The processes that underlie these programs must be enterprise-wide, but still collect and standardize the data for centralized analysis and control. Further, compliance performance reporting is becoming a common board of directors’ request and it is not uncommon for compliance programs to be the subject of an external audit.
Without automation, a compliance officer works through a patchwork of spreadsheets, paper files and forms, and manual email processes. These stop-gap efforts produce, at best, incremental changes and encumber compliance professionals with too much administrative overhead that distracts from their real job which is to maximize the return on ethics.
Where could your program benefit from automation?
Policy creation and management? Incident reporting and management? Tracking and managing your third party risk? The integration of key systems help ensure you can detect trends and successfully mitigate real compliance risks to the organization?
Our 2016 Policy Management Benchmark Report reveals that organizations using a centralized, standardized policy management system rate their programs more successful than those that don’t use software to automate. For incident reporting and management and third-party risk assessment, automation adds to program maturity and sophistication.
Simply put, realizing the full potential of your compliance program requires automated solutions. Without it, the overwhelming task of manual administration reduces operational efficiency, creates programs that are reactive rather than proactive and ultimately reduces the overall return on ethics these programs should deliver.
Join the Larger Conversation about Automating Systems
The 2016 Ethics & Compliance Virtual Conference is bringing together industry thought leaders and thousands of compliance professionals to showcase the return on investment of ethics and the values of automating compliance to maximize that return.
In the conference you’ll learn:
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How to integrate siloed compliance program elements
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How to set up efficiencies to improve productivity and business value
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How streamlining processes improves employee engagement and ultimately overall culture
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How automation can help predict and mitigate compliance risk
View original article at Ethics & Compliance MattersTM
