As regulatory standards increase in number and complexity, the cost of demonstrating compliance also continues to rise. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2018 Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State estimates that the annual regulatory costs in the U.S. amounted to almost $1.9 trillion in 2017.
Failure to comply with these regulatory standards often results in legal punishments in the form of fines, which further contribute to costs. As a result, it’s more important than ever for businesses to stay on top of regulatory change and take actionable steps to remain compliant. However, this is easier said than done!
For businesses to demonstrate compliance in an efficient and cost-effective manner, a compliance management system can be a real difference-maker. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at what a compliance management system is and 7 ways it helps businesses effectively manage and enforce regulations.
What is a Compliance Management System?
As the name suggests, a compliance management system is an all-encompassing program that helps managers and administrators minimize risks and plan, monitor, and control activities that ensure compliance with binding regulatory standards as well as legal requirements related to health, environment, and safety. It applies to every functional area of a business, along with how they handle their employees and customers.
7 Benefits of Compliance Management Software for your Business
1.All Your Compliance Requirements in One Place
A compliance management system brings together all your regulatory and business requirements under one integrated framework. This enables you to track all details related to all your compliance activities and tasks with ease and promotes adherence to these requirements by ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks.
Moreover, since all you need is one centralized solution across your enterprise, interdepartmental harmony is promoted, and the development of silos is prevented when it comes to compliance-related tasks.
2. Makes Collaboration Easy
Assigning and reassigning tasks among team members is greatly simplified. Moreover, users can provide status updates, share documents, exchange comments from the right within the compliance management system. Vital compliance information is no longer scattered across your organization, and team members don’t have different versions or multiple copies of the same document.
This helps ensure everyone knows what they need to know about their compliance tasks, along with cutting down on the time required to collect and distribute essential information.
3. Provides Visibility into Compliance Performance
Traditionally, non-compliance needs to be manually detected by quality technicians and reported to managers. Thus, any gaps in communication can have serious consequences.
A compliance management system offers managers and administrators a holistic view of compliance levels and performance across the entire organization through custom drill-downable reports and personalized real-time dashboards. These features provide them unprecedented visibility into the status and performance of their compliance efforts.
4. Automates Compliance Processes
Let’s face it, ensuring compliance entails a great deal of repetitive, menial tasks that can be both tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human error. A compliance management system automates most processes, including task scheduling, compliance monitoring, etc. and helps an organization drive agility, efficiency, and accuracy. As a result, you’re able to put your resources to better use and focus on the things that really matter.
5. Simplifies Tracking Regulatory Changes
With regulatory bodies frequently updating rules, standards, and regulations, staying on top of these and incorporating them into your compliance strategy can be tricky. You’d not only have to read up on these new regulations but also have to determine the changes, if any, have to be implemented.
A compliance management solution keeps a close eye on these developments and proactively tracks internal and external regulatory changes. Moreover, it identifies non-compliant processes and operations and helps you efficiently map new regulations and standards onto them.
6. Reduces Operational Costs
Compliance doesn’t always have to come with a cost. In fact, with the right system in place, you can even save money. Not only does it automate compliance monitoring and eliminate the need for investing in more personnel and resources, but it also proactively tracks regulatory changes and flags risks before they hurt you financially. Moreover, automation also reduces the chances of human error and oversight that may lead to fines and penalties down the road.
7. Boosts Customer Satisfaction
In addition to just compliance, having a compliance management solution in place also helps your business demonstrate your commitment to the development and improvement of systems and processes in accordance with set rules that are ultimately there for your customers’ benefit.
Thus, by helping your business put your customers at the heart of everything you do, a compliance solution serves to instill confidence in your organization and promote loyalty, which in turn leads to more customers.
Key Takeaway
By streamlining compliance and regulation monitoring processes, automating compliance workflows, and providing data-driven insights into your efforts, a compliance management system makes it significantly easier for an organization to ensure adherence to business and regulatory requirements, reduce risks associated with non-compliance, and boost customer confidence in their products and services.
Intagleo Systems has extensive experience in developing and deploying custom compliance management software for a diverse range of industry verticals. If you’re looking to develop the perfect compliance solution from the ground up or need to maintain or enhance the capabilities of your existing product, contact us today and get started with a free consultation. Our experts will gladly assist you.