Decoding the What, Why, When, and How of Compliance Workflow Automation

When it comes to winning new business prospects and customers, we always look at the sales and marketing functions. One of the most powerful and effective marketing pitches is compliance! Surprised? Organizations that stay compliant and adhere to stringent industry standards and policies at all times, are more secure and safe to conduct business with.

You can rest assured that your data and transactions are placed under the Z category by the compliance and security management team. Time is of the essence in compliance management.

As businesses scale up and strive to navigate through the ever-changing compliance space, a well-defined compliance workflow acts as a strategic tool. Compliance workflow automation not only provides several benefits for the business, but it can be the game changer in winning business prospects. Read on to know how. 

Challenges in Compliance Management

Before we get into the details of compliance workflows, let us understand the components of compliance management. Staying compliant requires businesses to adhere to industry standards and policies. Any organization that deals with sensitive information needs to operate within regulatory norms laid down by the industry to which they belong. Some of the common compliance standards include SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and CMMC. 

One of the significant challenges that a business has to face is the large customer database. Complex processes may involve several parties and data sources, causing operational inefficiencies that arise due to manual operations. The compliance team needs to reach out to customers directly to procure first-hand data, especially when key data is not available publicly. This often leads to incomplete or improper customer onboarding, which in turn manifests as a compliance breach. 

A complex KYC process is another challenge for organizations. Without a good document management system with a streamlined onboarding process, businesses may suffer the loss of information and experience a slower turnaround time. 

What is a Compliance Workflow?

The above challenges faced by businesses can be adequately addressed by adopting technology. With emerging technologies like robotic process automation and no code workflow automation, businesses can enhance efficiency in terms of speed and cost reduction, whilst meeting all the legal and compliance requirements. A streamlined compliance workflow ought to do the trick here. A compliance workflow is a set of processes that are carried out by the organization to ensure legal, regulatory, corporate, and compliance requirements are adhered to. 

Compliance workflows are effective in managing, tracking, and reporting functions that are required for obtaining certifications or adhering to regulatory standards. Compliance workflows can be made highly effective through compliance workflow automation.

When you automate the compliance workflow using AI and other technological solutions, continuous monitoring, accurate reporting, and centralized data management becomes easy. Compliance automation may be defined as the use of technology to automate compliance processes that are performed manually by employees.

Compliance process automation equips companies to simplify compliance procedures and perform compliance activities as soon as issues or compliance requirements arise. Compliance workflows like management assessment, testing, corrective action planning, and risk assessment can be streamlined with compliance workflow automation. 

Need for Compliance Process Automation

The main reason why companies opt for compliance workflow automation is to overcome the challenges posed by manual processes. Not only that, compliance process automation streamlines compliance operations. Compliance software monitors compliance checks, raises alerts for non-compliance, and generates accurate reports. The need for compliance is closely linked with the benefits it brings to the table. Here are the benefits of automating compliance workflows. 

Reduces the risk of oversight

Conventional compliance workflows are manual, which overwhelms the compliance team considering the sheer complexity and time involved in maintaining compliance. Compliance workflow automation helps reduce oversight by automating recurring and repetitive manual tasks and improving cross-functional collaboration. 

Enables continuous monitoring

A compliance automation software is loaded with pre-defined rules for real-time monitoring of internal controls and compliance tasks. Any unusual behavior or compliance drifts can be promptly identified by the software. The compliance team is alerted promptly by the software. Automating the compliance workflow also ensures better risk management and quicker responses. 

Improves resource handling

Manual methods eat up a huge chunk of employee bandwidth, especially tasks like evidence collection. Workflow automation helps organizations allocate appropriate resources for important tasks by taking care of recurring compliance tasks. 

Better adaptation to regulatory changes

Compliance process automation enables organizations to stay ahead of regulatory changes. Compliance tools help keep track of historical events and map the changes to controls that align with new requirements. 

Accurate reporting

The automated reports generated by the compliance software are based on data gathered from multiple sources, which provides a comprehensive coverage of all departments. Compliance automation along with its analytical capabilities offers deeper insights into compliance progress and facilitates better decision making. 

How to Implement Compliance Workflow?

Implementing compliance workflows the right way holds the key to successful automation. One of the crucial steps to ensuring compliance is streamlining workflows to ensure that only employees in specific roles have access to relevant data. Implementing a compliance workflow needs to be carried out in a well-defined and systematic manner. We have listed out 7 steps for successful compliance automation. 

1. Analysis and planning

Not just compliance, but any process that is to be automated needs to be analyzed thoroughly before designing the automation system. The first step in compliance automation is to identify regulatory requirements by researching guidelines and best practices specific to that industry. The next step is to review internal policies to identify compliance risks and gaps. Risk assessments must be conducted based on the severity of consequences. A thorough initial analysis lays the foundation for a well-designed compliance workflow. 

2. Defining policies and procedures

The existing policies in the company must be updated and new supporting policies to meet the compliance requirements must be created. These policies must clearly define how the program is structured, the roles and responsibilities assigned, and the plan for risk control and mitigation. Next, it must outline the monitoring, communication, reporting, and documentation guidelines. During this phase, it must also be ensured that the stakeholders are aware of and understand the new policies and updates. 

3. Listing compliance steps

This step involves the creation of compliance tasks from beginning to end. Starting from educating the workforce on compliance to implementing controls and monitoring activities – each step must be laid out according to timelines and documentation requirements. In addition to these controls, alerts or triggers for any compliance deviation must also be defined. 

4. Defining roles and responsibilities

Each workflow that is created must have specific assignees with complete clarity of tasks to be carried out along with the review process. A system for tagging users for things like document requests must be established so that collaboration within the team is increased and data silos are broken down. 

5. Implementation

At this stage, plans are put into action. All the tasks must be executed as per the pre-defined sequence and are tracked and logged for transparency and accountability. Once the task is completed, all the steps and completion status must be documented for audit purposes. 

6. Tracking for revisions

Monitoring and surveillance come with the implementation of any new system. Monitoring would require internal interviews and surveys, regular gathering of data, and scheduled internal audits. The effectiveness of compliance practices can be assessed by comparing key performance indicators. 

7. Reporting

A well-defined reporting format along with images and screenshots, an overall summary, and key details must be followed. The wins and the gaps must be backed by relevant data, and an improvement plan must be drafted for areas that require to be reworked. 

A cyclic implementation of these 7 implementation steps helps organizations achieve and stay in a state of complete compliance. 

What are the Challenges in Implementing Compliance Workflows?

Any new organizational change is met with opposition, and compliance process automation is no exception. The key challenges in implementing compliance automation are listed below –

Complex and strict regulations

Handling regulations and translating them into internal policies can be overwhelming, especially with the rate at which they change. With complex regulations like ISO 27001 or GDPR, companies cannot afford any miscalculations or misjudgments. 

Collaboration issues

Compliance is a shared responsibility of multiple stakeholders. For teams that are used to working in silos, collaborating on compliance activities can be a challenge. Implementing an organization-wide compliance framework poses several challenges. 

Audit follow-ups

Auditors and compliance officers get drained out due to the back-and-forth discussions. The main reason is that businesses must keep providing the auditor with context for the evidence or documentation submitted.  

Compliance Automation with Cflow

Compliance process automation can be easy and efficient with workflow automation software like Cflow. The no-code workflow builder, real-time reporting and analytics, SLAs, and escalation features make Cflow the right tool for automating compliance workflows. The SLAs and escalation feature in Cflow has been put in to ensure that you never fall out of compliance. Alerts and notifications are regularly issued to employees reminding them of their work so that deadlines are not missed at any cost. You can –

• Easily create rules in Cflow so you never fall out of compliance
• Set specific task goals and deadlines
• Issue reminders and notifications so that deadlines are not breached
• Escalate to keep stakeholders informed of pending and overdue tasks. 

Final Thoughts

Meeting the challenges in compliance management with workflow automation is the most effective solution to all your compliance woes. Staying compliant is a necessity, but adopting manual means to get there is not sustainable in the long run. A no-code workflow automation software like Cflow makes compliance process automation a breeze. Sign up for the free trial of Cflow to automate your compliance workflow.