Digital Transformation of Compliance: Trends for 2022

Every year, new directives and regulations are adding complexity to compliance operations across all industries. Navigating the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape is rather challenging for contemporary business owners, which is why advanced alternative approaches to compliance management are becoming essential to retain a competitive advantage.

Modern organizations have to deal with a broad spectrum of issues that hamper the effectiveness of compliance practices. Some of the most pressing issues are – manual and time-consuming processes, the inability to keep pace with regulatory changes, the lack of valuable security insights, and siloed approaches to governance and risk management. Companies need to have a profound understanding of why it’s important to stay up to date on emerging compliance trends. Leveraging digital transformation initiatives in compliance management can resolve all of the issues mentioned above and help organizations manage and comply with continually shifting regulations proactively. Let’s review the most anticipated compliance trends for 2022.

Data Consolidation

Dispersed data that is stored in several various storages is one of the major pain points today. This becomes a silo that prevents responsible persons from doing quick and convenient work, making them get stuck between numerous spreadsheets and documents. What a modern CISO or DPO needs, is quick access to compliance-related information, report generation, and, of course, its security.
A centralized data management platform is now a must for companies to ensure that data is correctly and safely stored, can be quickly accessed, and supports organizations’ compliance requirements. Compliance Aspekte stands as a single data consolidation center and communication platform for all compliance-related activity.

ESG as a Major Compliance Industry Trend

Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) has been keeping up the pace and ESG responsibilities are already a part of many ethics and compliance in many leading companies (e.g., Allianz, Vodafone, Mitsubishi, Westinghouse, Shell, Sandvik, etc.) and will continue to be a dominant trend over the next few years. The notion unites a sustainable approach to environmental, social, and governmental aspects of a company’s functioning.

Optimizing Compliance with AI-driven Chatbots

Automated interactions with customers and employees are among the significant digital transformation trends that continue to grow exponentially every year. AI and ML-based chatbots and personal assistants are steadily adopted into workplaces to augment human performance and eliminate time-consuming manual processes.

The adoption of advanced AI-driven solutions is an ascending trend within the digital transformation of compliance. Chatbots offer compliance assistance that can enhance compliance managers’ productivity by providing real-time insights, generating reports, and automating a broad spectrum of other compliance-related activities.

Learn more: How AI Chatbots Transform the Working Environment

More Privacy

After the GDPR came into effect in 2018, data protection regulations throughout the world are becoming more stringent, more rigid, and more meticulously enforced. The data privacy regulatory environment is becoming more rigorous, new privacy laws are coming into action: more countries are going for national data policies, the United States introducing CDPA in 2023, China trying to increase demand for data management, etc. We foresee that in the near future, the challenging reality and differing privacy regulations between countries will prompt global organizations to adhere to a uniform and comprehensive approach to data-privacy-as-a-service.

Driving Efficiency & Compliance with RPA Tools

Robotic process automation (RPA) is another advanced technology that can streamline workflows and reduce manual effort. In contrast, to live interaction of chatbots and personal assistants, RPA tools perform unattended execution of repetitive tasks. By leveraging the RPA tools list into compliance practices, organizations can benefit from the swift and error-free automation of various routine activities. Namely, RPA software tools help to automate report generation and delivery, e-mail circulation, status updates, notifications, change tracking, and different asset compliance processes.

Growing Demand for Remote Audits

Internal and external audits are essential to ensure full compliance with the changing regulatory landscape. However, usual audit execution with auditors’ on-site presence is currently impossible due to the safety constraints and travel restrictions proceeding from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) have made remote audits feasible and practical. In a post-pandemic environment, remote auditing will consolidate its position as a strong trend, as it is flexible, effective, and reduces time and costs.

Read more about conducting a virtual audit

Adoption of Holistic GRC Solutions

As cyber threats evolve and become more sophisticated, effective risk management processes become business-critical. To address this challenge, organizations are actively adopting innovative governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) tools. Such tools enhance operational efficiency, break down the silos in terms of risk management, and facilitate decision-making. Moreover, holistic GRC solutions enable fast and accurate risk assessment, gap analysis, and incident response. Tool-driven compliance management is becoming indispensable for security compliance, and the adoption of this approach will remain a strong trend in the upcoming years. 

Read more: How to do risk analysis with compliance software

Conclusion

By leveraging digital transformation initiatives into compliance, business owners can keep pace and proactively manage and navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape. The shift to single platforms for compliance management, the development of AI-based solutions, the best RPA tools, and advanced GRC software will remain ascending trends within compliance practices for 2022. This is due to the tangible business benefits they provide, including compliance automation, enhanced efficiency, and an integrated approach to compliance management.