If you’re a member of a risk management team, we probably don’t need to tell you how much manual processes can slow down your compliance program. When important information is buried in emails, spreadsheets and inaccessible documents, risk assessments become less accurate, security teams struggle to coordinate and audit readiness becomes nearly impossible.
These may seem like separate issues, but they all share one potential solution: the right compliance software. A centralized, connected governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platform can bring fragmented workflows together under one roof, eliminate manual tracking and provide stakeholders outside the GRC team with real-time insights into the impact of your compliance management efforts through clearer compliance reporting.
In this article, we’ll break down how compliance management software can help you move your GRC work from scattered spreadsheets to a single simplified system.
Key Takeaways
- Manual compliance processes slow down risk management and increase compliance risks.
- Centralized compliance software streamlines workflows, improves visibility, and enhances compliance reporting.
- A GRC platform consolidates various frameworks and automates audit management, making processes more efficient.
- When selecting compliance software, ensure it’s tailored for your team’s needs and seek organization-wide buy-in.
- Schedule a demo to see how compliance software can centralize and simplify your compliance efforts.
Table of Contents
The Problem with Manual Compliance Processes
Manual processes can introduce new compliance risks into already complex GRC environments. In worst-case scenarios, compounding delays, missing information and siloed workflows may lead to overlooked third-party risk, reduced risk intelligence across the organization and unintended violations of relevant regulations.
While you’re probably intimately familiar with the daily frustrations caused by manual compliance work, it can be tough to see the bigger picture of growing risk from within the day-to-day. These are just a few of the problems that may be missed.
Invisible Knowledge Barriers Becoming Risks
Patchwork GRC processes can easily create new or inflate existing compliance risks when risk management teams work in their own siloed software or workflows without meaningful interaction with the organization as a whole. In this kind of environment, only a few individuals or teams have access to the full scope of ongoing compliance efforts, even if the potential consequences of an adverse event would affect the entire organization.
A siloed work structure often goes hand in hand with another commonly unnoticed compliance issue: undocumented knowledge. Without a central source of truth for risk management workflows, the real burden of keeping policies up to date, tracking progress and prioritizing appropriately often falls on a few individuals or teams. When those people leave the organization or move to a different role, all of that knowledge leaves with them.
Playing Catch-up with Regulatory Changes
When it comes to regulatory compliance, siloed knowledge can snowball into even more severe risks. Depending on your business, you may be subject to regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or any number of local or state laws.
Whether you work in a highly regulated industry like finance or healthcare, operate in multiple geographic markets with different regulatory bodies or are otherwise dealing with a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, handling frequently changing regulatory requirements turns ad hoc GRC processes into real legal risks. Without consistent regulatory coverage and policy mapping, regulatory changes can be even harder to track across teams and jurisdictions.
For example, when important regulatory updates get circulated via email or instant messages, vital information can fail to reach the people who need to act on it. Over time, risks go overlooked, leading to adverse outcomes such as security breaches, unexpected audits and even legal consequences like fines.
Reduced Visibility for Stakeholders
Whether you get the resources you need to do your job effectively can depend on how well the stakeholders and leaders at your company understand the impact of your efforts. One of the more subtle downsides of manual compliance is how the complexity and inefficiencies can obscure the real effects of your work. Reduced visibility can make it difficult to justify increased budgetary or other kinds of resources to people outside of the GRC team.
Without a central dashboard for reviewing compliance efforts or a consistent set of metrics for easily evaluating them, leadership understandably struggles to understand the importance of the work. This is especially true when the main goal of your team is preventing potential disasters, as there’s no clear way to quantify the impact of something that hasn’t happened.
Learn more: How to Build an Effective Corporate Compliance Program
How Centralized Compliance Software Addresses the Issues
Fortunately, solving the many problems created by manual compliance work is easier than living with the potential fallout. The right centralized GRC platform can take much of the drudgery and guesswork out of managing compliance.
However, when you’re working with a patchwork set of ad hoc processes that seem to be functioning well enough so far, it can be hard to envision a new way of solving deep-seated organizational issues. So what does the right compliance software actually change?
What Compliance Software Actually Does
Purpose-built compliance software can replace a range of single-purpose tools with a single, clear dashboard for managing and reviewing GRC tasks across internal systems. Here are a few of the main benefits of using compliance software:
- Combines multiple frameworks: If your organization needs to adhere to more than one regulatory framework, compliance can turn into a thicket of competing priorities. With GRC software, you can organize all of your framework requirements into a single central reference point, allowing diverse teams to all work toward shared goals without stepping on each other’s toes.
- Streamlines audit management: When you need to be able to prove your readiness for multiple types of audits at a moment’s notice, compliance software changes everything. Evidence collection happens automatically as you go about your work, rather than your team needing to halt the work itself to attend to documentation or audit preparation. Built-in audit trails can also make it easier to understand what changed, when it changed and who was involved.
- Keeps stakeholders informed: GRC software can create accessible dashboards that allow stakeholders outside your team to get a bird’s-eye view of what your risk management team is working on, where your ongoing tasks stand and how the work you’ve already done has impacted the business. Replace cumbersome reporting tasks and one-off questions with a single updated, streamlined source of truth holding all the information stakeholders need for consistent compliance reporting.
Supports repeatable workflows: Compliance software can also help standardize control testing, process automation and the approval process, reducing the need for teams to manage recurring tasks by hand..
Learn more: Managing Compliance Across Multiple Frameworks in Manufacturing
How to Select Your GRC Platform
While you may be eager to take advantage of the many benefits, be careful not to rush the selection and purchasing process. You won’t save much work and may even make more by choosing the wrong GRC platform. Keep these best practices in mind as you make your decision:
- Choose the right tool for your team: Not all platforms are created equal. Think through how your organization will actually use the software, and look for a platform that is purpose-built for GRC teams, customizable and accessible to non-experts.
- Seek buy-in from across the organization: Leadership and other stakeholders outside your GRC team may need an explanation of how investing in compliance software will help save money in the long run. Be prepared for questions with a thorough understanding of what you can get out of the software and metrics that estimate how much time and money the organization stands to save by using it. Try to offer a few examples of specific work processes the software could improve or eliminate and see how capabilities like Onspring AI may support your team’s existing workflows.
- Try before you buy: A reputable service will often let you try out its software before you make a commitment. You can get a personalized tour of Onspring’s compliance management software by booking a live demo.
Start Streamlining and Automating Your Compliance Efforts
Ready to say goodbye to sifting through spreadsheets and start centralizing your compliance work with a connected GRC platform? Schedule your personalized demo to learn how Onspring can simplify compliance monitoring for your team.
