Navigating Compliance: The Power of Automated Solutions
Toni Buffa
Related:
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Every Compliance Officer’s Best Friend: Automated Compliance Workflow
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How to Take Control Over Regulatory Compliance with Automation
Workflow automation can benefit every department in an organization, but it’s safe to say it is a perfect match for compliance officers or teams. Compliance teams ensure that a business adheres to external rules and internal controls. A whole department for larger organizations might handle this, but for small organizations, this may be within the functions of the CFO, CEO, or head of HR.
As compliance regulations continue to increase in both number and scope, the automation of compliance workflows has become critical. By leveraging workflow automation, compliance professionals can lower the risk of non-compliant behavior and optimize the expected return on an organization’s compliance strategy, planning, and training investment.
This article will cover the importance of compliance, the definition and components of workflow automation, and how it’ll save compliance teams. It will also feature some case studies from Nutrient Workflow customers.
The Importance of Automated Workflows for Compliance
Growing Volume of Regulations
Whether you need to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO Standards, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, HIPAA, SEC, FINRA, OCC, internal security protocols, incident management, or any other process compliance requirements, workflow automation allows you to build compliance workflows that provide a safety net for your organization.
Consequences of Non-Compliance
Neglecting the need for compliance protocols will leave your organization at serious risk. Non-compliance can lead to business disruption, penalties, fines, productivity loss, loss of trust from consumers, lawsuits, and the list goes on. If there is resistance to implementing software to handle compliance because of cost, the cost of an accidental non-compliant process is much higher.
The Role of Workflow Automation
Workflow Automation refers to the design, execution, and automation of processes based on workflow rules where human tasks, data, or files are routed between people or systems based on pre-defined business rules.
By automating workflows, especially those processes that are primarily handled manually by employees, significant improvements can be made in:
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Efficiency
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Productivity
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Accuracy
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Audibility
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Accountability
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Job Satisfaction
By leveraging workflow automation, compliance professionals can lower the risk of non-compliant behavior and optimize the expected return on an organization’s compliance strategy, planning, and training investment.
Compliance Process Examples
Before jumping into the benefits, here are a few compliance-focused processes our customers have automated with Nutrient Workflow’s workflow management solution.
3 Benefits of Automated Compliance Workflows
A Complete Audit Trail
Depending on your industry (especially healthcare, finance, government contracting, insurance, etc.), you may be subject to a regulatory audit. Government agencies can use audits you provide to review and confirm that proper standards were followed and that you can identify sources.
In Nutrient Workflow’s workflow automation platform, an audit trail provides explicit electronic records of who, what, when, where, and how information is used to confirm that tasks were performed as expected by team members or identify errors.
Ease of Use for Employees
When employees have one main workflow interface for attestations, approval requests, policies, and other compliance-related responsibilities, the odds are good that compliance with required policies will go up simply because you’ve made it easier for them to find information when needed.
Accuracy and Error Reduction
One error in the process can throw off the entire workflow and lead to inefficiencies. Automation minimizes the risk of human error associated with manual compliance tasks. Automated workflows enhance accuracy by ensuring consistency and adherence to predefined rules, mitigating the potential for costly compliance mistakes.
Successful Implementations
“Before Nutrient Workflow, we used paper’ finance memos’ that weren’t all standard, that resulted in storage issues, that were often lacking the appropriate approvals and then later were challenging to look up and locate. Our users always had trouble finding the information before, but now employees know where to find it; it’s all in one place.” – Elizabeth Petrie, Capital Planning Controller, BP.
Read how some of our customers have used Nutrient Workflow to address compliance issues:
“The SOX Assessments tool gave Cardinal the ability to easily document and communicate policies and procedures, carry out management assessment, base its internal controls on a suitably recognized framework, automate enforcement of defined internal controls, and create a complete audit trail of transactions and control activities.” Cardinal Logistics Case Study
In conclusion, as the regulatory landscape continues to grow, the importance of automating compliance workflows skyrockets. Enforce consistent processes to match the policies and procedures within your organization or department and build compliance workflows that provide a safety net for your organization. Learn more about how you can adapt our solution to maintain compliance with automation by scheduling a demonstration of the Nutrient Workflow platform.
