Compliance in many organisations is reactive rather than proactive, and perceived as a necessary evil to stay in business. More sophisticated organisations who place a higher value on compliance, however, are using the data from compliance audits to gain competitive advantage and mitigate risk exposure.
Compliance data, when collected correctly, is rich business intelligence and offers invaluable insight into internal and external business process, performance and control metrics. Digitised compliance monitoring systems are a necessity to gather this information in real-time, which is the only way this application of the data is effectively possible. The result of this forward thinking application of data is a state of “predictive compliance”.
Today we consider how real-time audit data can allow businesses to predict and prevent future compliance risks
What is Predictive Compliance?
At it’s core, compliance auditing is the process of investigating anomalies in a system or process, in order to better understand them or to prioritise them in the governance structure. Having captured compliance data across their enterprise, many compliance experts are now seeking ways in which they can utilise this data to add value back to their business.
Predictive compliance works similarly to predictive maintenance principles. Predictive maintenance uses data to predict when critical control process failures or events will occur. This allows the maintenance to be performed before failure occurs, but at the lowest frequency possible without incurring the costs associated with too much unnecessary preventative maintenance, or even more costly reactive maintenance.
Applying this idea to compliance affords a business the same type of future-proofing in compliance costs and resources as it does in maintenance areas.
From Reactive to Predictive
Businesses generally go through a compliance journey in stages similar to the following:
Basic – Ad Hoc – The business lacks identification of critical control processes, policies and procedures.
Standardised – Some Formalisation – Some critical business control processes exist, as well as some systems and tools in place to collect data. Information may not be complete and accurate, and is typically not used for decision making.
Rationalised – Active Management – Company vision, policies, and tools are used to manage critical business control processes. Reliable information from audits is used to manage the assets to business performance measures and targets.
Dynamic – Optimised – Near real time alignment with the changing regulatory landscape and the needs of the business. This gives the business a competitive advantage through active and predictive compliance programs.
Once the Dynamic stage is understood and pursued by the business, the goal of predictive compliance comes within reach. The only way for organisations to achieve this is through electronic or digital means of collecting and aggregating compliance data, using systems like Compliance Checkpoint.
Compliance Checkpoint provides two important functions in reaching a state of predictive compliance. First, the system is tightly integrated with third party qualified content, automatically updating with any new information regarding regulation changes related to compliance. Second, the system allows audit data to be reviewed and analysed immediately. This near real time availability of data is key to monitoring systems and preventing reactive situations.
Compliance Checkpoint, whilst still in the early phase of development today, has the capability to integrate with Internet of Things (IOT) devices, such as wearable devices, tablets or asset management sensors which initiate the compliance process rather solely relying upon human decision points.
Compliance Experts provide clients with access to the Compliance Checkpoint Software Technology, which is complimented by our Professional Auditing and Consulting services. This is our unique point of difference. To learn more, visit our website or start the free 30 day trial of Compliance Checkpoint.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
