Why Use Automated Compliance Solutions in 2024

Compliance automation has never been more important as companies face frequently updated regulations and a growing cost of non-compliance. 

A recent study found that the cost of non-compliance is 2.71 times higher than the cost of compliance. Therefore, organizations that invest in achieving and maintaining compliance will ultimately reduce their financial impact and manage the risks that frameworks and regulations are designed to mitigate. 

Maintaining compliance can still be unnecessarily expensive and complex if the right tools are not utilized. Manual processes consume time and leave room for human error. Additionally, staying updated on ever-changing regulations alone can require a dedicated team. As a result, spreadsheets and manual processes are no longer sufficient.

Fortunately, leveraging the latest compliance automation software can reduce the cost of compliance via automation, cross-walking controls, and replacing several manual processes. 

Read on to learn more about how automated compliance software can transform your compliance practices to save time and resources.

What is an Automated Compliance Solution?

Achieving compliance is a multi-faceted process that requires meeting all applicable regulatory requirements, and it’s been a necessity for decades. However, it was often completed with spreadsheets, disjointed documentation, and painstaking reporting. 

Now, compliance automation software uses the latest advances in AI, APIs, and reporting analytics to streamline the compliance process. The right platform will also create a centralized location for reporting, documentation, and enhanced visibility. 

The result of compliance automation is ensuring your organization maintains compliance while reducing the overall cost of compliance. Additionally, compliance automation allows organizations to utilize findings to help further manage and mitigate risks.

Top Benefits of Leveraging Compliance Automation

Investing in compliance automation provides powerful business benefits. Let’s explore some of the top benefits companies will appreciate after implementing compliance automation. 

Stay Updated on Regulatory Changes

Governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) have grown increasingly complex as new regulatory requirements have been enacted. Additionally, most regulatory bodies make frequent policy updates that organizations are expected to meet. 

Staying updated on the latest regulatory changes is time-consuming and exceedingly error-prone. In addition, pouring through updated regulatory documentation is mind-numbing and can result in overlooking new requirements. 

Conversely, compliance automation software regularly pulls regulatory requirements from specialized databases so that your organization is always aware of any changes that need to be made. Your organization will never be unaware of a regulatory change until you get a fine for failing to meet it. 

Improve Productivity with Automated Processes

Compliance professionals are entirely too accustomed to spending hours compiling a single report, reading through new documentation from regulator agencies, and analyzing business operations to understand if the organization is meeting requirements. 

In the past, these processes could reasonably be completed by a small team of compliance experts. But now, it’s a near-impossible feat to use manual processes to meet evolving requirements, compile the various reports necessary to prove compliance, and understand every system and process in the business. 

Now, these same professionals can leverage automation to complete most tasks that once consumed days, weeks, or even months. The result is improved productivity from your skilled workforce, allowing them to focus on higher-impact tasks instead of living in spreadsheets.

Real-Time Data and Reporting in a Central Dashboard

Compliance data and reporting are necessary to prove compliance, and they can also help understand other aspects of your business that enable data-driven decisions. Automation makes reporting straightforward and utilizes real-time data. 

Any decision-maker throughout the organization can access the platform’s central dashboard to understand the real-time compliance status and generate any required reports. 

Previously, decision-makers had to ask the compliance team to compile the same reports manually. Not only did this consume the team’s time, but the decision-maker had to wait days or weeks to receive the information. Leveraging automated reporting massively improves access to vital information.

Minimize the Cost of Compliance

Each of the above points has an essential thing in common: they reduce the cost of compliance. 

Staying up to date with regulatory changes helps avoid fines, automating manual processes allows skilled workers to focus on business-impacting tasks, and real-time reporting gives anyone access to valuable information without requiring another team.  

The need to achieve and maintain compliance isn’t going to disappear. Instead, it will likely grow increasingly complex and potentially more expensive. Embracing automated compliance software now will provide immediate and long-term cost savings.

Best Practices for Compliance Automation Solutions

Making the most of your compliance automation platform requires following a few key best practices. Consider the following points as you migrate and utilize your new platform. 

Understand Your Compliance Landscape

As you set up your new platform, you must understand every applicable regulatory requirement. The software may be able to determine common frameworks and regulations that might apply. Still, you also need to be well-aware of every regulation that applies to your business that the software might not detect on its own.

Be aware of standard industry requirements, such as PCI DSS, GDPR, NIST, and HIPAA. Additionally, you should understand any jurisdictional requirements unique to your areas of operation. 

For example, if you’re using financial compliance automation solutions, you’ll need to configure the platform for PCI DSS compliance. Depending on the software you use, this can be a simple process but still a critical one.

Don’t Stop at Compliance Validation

Compliance validation is often a prime selling point of automation, but don’t stop there. An ideal compliance automation solution will allow you to crosswalk controls between different frameworks and regulations. 

Crosswalking is the process of mapping a single control to multiple frameworks. For example, it’s common for frameworks and regulations to have requirements about your data storage practices. Crosswalking allows your data storage practices to apply to several frameworks simultaneously, and any updates to your practices will automatically be updated for each framework. 

Let Compliance Work Serve Risk Management

Compliance and risk management are intricately intertwined, which is why governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) has become an increasingly popular term. However, it’s still too common for organizations to treat them as separate processes and departments. 

Automation can help bridge the gap between risk management and compliance—the right platform grants real-time insights into both your compliance and risk management landscape. If a change is made to meet new compliance requirements, that exact change can serve the risk management team.

The risk management team will then gain a deeper understanding of your business’s inherent risks, implement controls that will satisfy compliance requirements, and monitor residual risks to determine if further updates must be made. It’s GRC in action. 

Partner with Centraleyes for a Fully Automated Compliance Solution

It’s crucial to use the right compliance automation platform to fully realize the benefits it makes possible. The platform you choose will ultimately determine how effectively you maintain compliance, produce accurate reports, and reduce the cost of compliance. 
Centraleyes is an industry-recognized compliance automation solution that has helped our clients transform their GRC processes. Ready to discover how Centraleyes can automate your compliance processes? Reach out to us today to talk to a compliance automation expert and discover what’s possible.