While compliance regulations do not change frequently, it can be difficult for businesses without a dedicated tech or legal department to keep up with the fluctuations in law without running the risk of adhering to outdated laws. As a result, businesses can face steep fees for non-compliance that can put a significant strain on their operations and a dent in their finances.
However, a legal department or an IT department are not the only ways to maintain regulation compliance. Technology can help smooth the process of keeping track with regulation changes, making it much easier to follow what an organisation needs to do to stay on the right side of the law.
Here are some benefits of compliance tech that can help businesses beyond keeping track of regulations and avoiding fines.
1. Checking documents for errors
If your organisation has to go through a lot of paperwork, manually checking every uploaded document will take up a significant amount of time, even with the benefit of increased accuracy. By outsourcing your compliance needs to automation technology, you can outsource your document checks to a technological process, which frees up your time and adds a greater level of accuracy to your document-checks.
2. Managing data storage
There are several laws that outline how organisations can store and save data, and it can be daunting for any business to try and keep in mind all the regulations that they need to follow to protect sensitive client information. Using a well-structured storage strategy to adhere to regulations means that your company is less likely to experience a security breach, though the risk of a security breach is never truly at zero. Additionally, by covering your bases and outsourcing your compliance needs to technology, there is every possibility that you are legally covered from the steep fines that come with a security issue – provided that you’ve maintained your compliance technology well.
3. Easier reporting
If you have to regularly generate reports to showcase your adherence to regulations, technology can make it a lot faster to come up with the data – without taking up too much of your team’s time to generate. Reports put together by compliance software are automatically in line with what regulatory boards need to see, and therefore saves you time and money when you need to publish or generate reports for your business health.
4. Change log tracking
If there’s one thing that software is really good at keeping track of, it’s changes. Changes to regulations can be easily timestamped, making it easier to track when a changeover occurred, and thus easier to cover your bases in the case of any external issue. By having a dedicated track of all the changes you’ve made for your business, you protect yourself from the risk of security breaches – which, for most businesses, can be a matter of ‘when’, and not ‘if’. Additionally, compliance software can keep track of all incidents that occur, making it easier for you to walk back to the moment when an incident was reported and what the follow-up steps were.
5. Embedded requirements
The hardest part of keeping track of regulatory compliance is making sure to adhere to all the requirements that are set in place for businesses. With technology, this is less of a concern, as you can build your software to include embedded checks and certifications that can speed up the process of double-checking your documents or following your processes. This makes it less likely that your company will be found in breach of regulation.
Compliance software is often tricky for people who aren’t familiar with technology, however that doesn’t mean that organisations without a dedicated IT team can’t benefit from regulating their business processes through technology. Outsourcing your IT needs to a software-as-a-service company is a quick and easy way to make sure that your business stays on the right side of regulations. If you’re looking to sharpen up your compliance processes, reach out – we’re happy to help you find a balance that works for you.
