Complying with laws established to protect consumers and businesses from harmful use of technology has become crucial for staying competitive. Correctly following the set guidelines for ethical use of IT assets and security standards will impact your reputation. In this day and age where the internet is an information gold mine, compliance is one of the best ways to secure and maintain the integrity of using technology for all sorts of dealings with businesses.
What is compliance management?
Compliance management is a collective term for all the tools and processes a company implements to ensure adherence to laws, regulations, policies, standards and codes of conduct. Compliance management tools and processes are put in place to find violations and protect a company from violating anything.
4 reasons for compliance management
The principle behind compliance management relates to preventive measures. It’s about being proactive to prevent anything that can harm your business’s reputation and customer’s rights. It’s also there so you won’t have to worry if your company’s practices are complying with the law. To shed more light on how compliance management helps a business, here are four aspects that explain why companies and organizations implement it:
1. Effective and uniform compliance
The lack of having an effective compliance system has resulted in violations of consumer financial laws. Hence, the government expects institutions to commit to improving their compliance management accordingly. This is because every review or examination conducted by authorities includes assessing an entity’s compliance management system.
2. Addressing the dangers of a data breach
Cybersecurity is at the core of compliance management. A data breach can damage even the most reputable and established companies in any industry. Compliance management boosts an entity’s security and minimizes the harm a data breach can cause, which is also something a credible managed services provider would know.
3. Internal processes
Having effective compliance management allows for a smoother compliance process from start to finish. It should be a process where everything is communicated properly to all involved parties to streamline compliance management.
4. Finding and maintaining a capital partner
As aforementioned, compliance management is also important to stay competitive. Funding sources look for proof of compliance from business partners. Hence, your company must stay updated with the current compliance requirements because it can help you find a capital partner and maintain access to the funds you need to stay in business.
Implementing compliance management
Compliance management is a program that must have a solid foundation for a company to rely on it. The foundation of any successful compliance management program is the culture of integrity. These are the steps to build that culture in your organization:
Everyone in the organization must be on board
This point says everyone, and it means exactly that. Top-down commitment to full legal compliance should understand what’s at stake, the advantages of having an effective compliance program, and what it aims to achieve. That will set the tone for the entire creation of the program and the urgency it requires to make one.
Conduct a risk assessment
Conducting a risk assessment will help identify and classify the risks that your business is most exposed to. It will also help determine the actions you can take to avoid, mitigate, or remediate those risks.
Audit existing policies
Look at the current policies you have to see what you can do. Determine which ones you need to improve or update and the ones that you should remove.
Provide training
After determining risks and auditing current policies, you should provide substantial compliance training to all relevant employees. They all need to understand your compliance program and how it applies to their regular work schedule. It should be incorporated in standard company practices to minimize errors and mishaps.
Set up a system for monitoring, record-keeping and reviewing
Anything relevant to compliance should be monitored, kept on record and reviewed periodically. This stuff helps to maintain your program’s relevancy.
Promote accountability
Everyone should be held accountable regarding compliance management. There must be a system in place to deal with violations committed by everyone. Policies regarding this should be clearly discussed top-down and enforced consistently.
The benefits of compliance management
Compliance management is there to make adhering to policies easier. It’s there to protect your company and your customers from sustaining financial and reputation damages. An effective compliance management program is your friend that’ll help make running your business easier.
