Compliance at Source

The compliance industry is rapidly changing with the advent of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and AI (Artificial Intelligence). Companies are cutting down on costs in the entire chain of compliance process. Here is how technology is changing in the 3 major facets of a compliance system.

1. Identifying what to comply with:

Typically many organisations hire a consulting firm or build an inhouse team to go through the arduous task of identifying and building a compliance framework. Such kind of projects may take anywhere between a month or even a year to get the entire compliance framework to a place where it can be used for compliance and governance of a company’s compliance program.

However, many compliance software/s are now using algorithms which automatically detect and set up the framework in a much lesser time. For example, Simpliance takes just about 5 minutes to set up the compliance framework for Labour Laws across India spanning 122 Acts, 555 Rules and 8700 odd compliances using a patent pending algorithm.

2. Process of complying:

Many compliance frameworks fail just like other ERP tech implementations as well.The problem is not with technology, it is generally to do with people who run the technology, post implementation. The first year of any new compliance tech implementation is the hardest as many operational processes have to be rigorously put in place to make the tech successful. Generally many compliance professionals fail to recognise this which leads to compliance systems failing. However, many new compliance tech companies are using RPA and AI to bypass human intervention in compliance.

There are two ways of doing this:

1. 1. Solving compliance at source: The best way of doing compliance is to tackle it at the source. Tech compliance companies or even core ERP tech platforms are building compliance checks right at the source of transaction rather than having to comply with compliance standards later. Let’s take the example of say minimum wage compliance for organisations. Today organisations manually check for minimum wages before running their payroll. In a country like India where every state promulgates minimum wages in different formats, compliance to minimum wages can be a huge task. To avoid such mistakes and reduce manual effort, companies like Simpliance provide up-to-date databases on minimum wage which can directly connect to the payroll system and automatically update minimum wages during payroll. This ensures that time and effort is not wasted for this particular compliance process.

1. 2. Using RPA to replace humans for manual compliance checks. If accurate data points are not available for compliance at source, companies are using RPA otherwise known as bots which replaces humans to do the laborious process of checking documents, updating systems and closing compliance tasks and activities. Companies who have used successful RPA models have saved more than 70% of their manual compliance processes.

3. Assurance of compliance:

This step is the final step of any compliance framework. Companies generally use auditors to ensure all data points around compliance are thoroughly checked for any failures. Since this process is ‘After the Fact’, RPA is being widely used to do the manual work of checking for failures instead of auditors having to verify huge amounts of data. Alternatively, digitised methods of online audit platforms are also emerging to move the entire audit process online. This helps in reducing a lot of costs related to travel, manual reporting and tracking of audit objections and non-compliances.

In a nutshell, the manual process of compliance is rapidly changing into a tech-enabled process. Compliance professionals now need to move up from being a transactional function to a value added function which provides proactive Risk and Business Continuity to the organisation.

Authored by Anil Prem D’Souza, Founder and CEO , Simpliance Technologies, a Quess company