All too often, GRC compliance becomes a complete nightmare of spreadsheets and emails. The process for many organizations is clunky at best and totally disorganized at worst. But it doesn’t have to be! Continuous tracking with automated workflows can eliminate the hassle of audit preparation and save your organization significant amounts of time and money.
To be well-prepared for an audit requires attention to workflow. So much has to be done to every specific piece of evidence, it’s no wonder that things frequently fall through. Each piece has to be requested, assigned, tracked, provided, vetted and reviewed, assembled and provided to the requestor… and trying to manage all of this via email inevitably complicates the process beyond measure.
Continuous tracking with VeilSun’s compliance system, on the other hand, will make your compliance less painful and vastly more efficient. Here are 6 benefits of an automated workflow tool for continuous compliance tracking.
1. Centralized evidence means fewer errors.
When compliance is managed via email and spreadsheets, it’s a headache for everyone and an opportunity for too many things to fall through the cracks. The endless back and forth makes things complex and hard to quantify. It’s difficult to assess the overall status and hard to keep track of where each piece of evidence is in the process.
With our automated workflow tool, the evidence requesting, gathering, and vetting all happens in one place -- making it much easier to ensure nothing falls through and that the right information ends up in the right hands. Everyone can easily access their tasks and quickly see the status of each piece of evidence.
2. Measure progress in real time.
Even with the best spreadsheet, it can be hard to know where you are in the collection process. Are you 20% or 80% complete? Which pieces have been submitted and which are outstanding? Who is responsible for the unresolved tasks? When working through spreadsheets and email, trying to find answers to these questions quickly devolves into an archeological expedition.
Ideally, you should be able to assess progress at a glance. VeilSun’s applications allow you to measure progress and report on it in real time. You’ll be able to quickly identify what has been collected and what remains to be done. Our dashboard views make it easy to quickly assess progress and tackle nonconformities.
3. Ensure data remains secure.
Emailing almost inevitably leads to lapses in data security. Information is difficult to vet and proper clearances difficult to ensure. Too often, those who shouldn’t have access to particular pieces of evidence end up on unsecure email threads. With a continuous tracking system in place, levels of exposure and roles can easily be managed. Tasks can be assigned and clearances can be set for each piece of evidence requested and gathered. This keeps your information siloed and appropriately hierarchical.
4. Identify root causes and take corrective action.
Without a means to quickly take in the big picture of your compliance process, it’s incredibly difficult to identify problem areas. Endless email chains don’t make it clear where or how things are falling through the cracks. Continuous tracking allows you to identify trends, diagnose root causes, and quickly implement corrective actions. With clear task assignment and status designations, you won’t have to dig through your email archive to find out where things went awry.
5. Create consistent taxonomies and workflows.
When compliance isn’t continuous, workflows end up responsive and erratic. Evidence gathering and processing isn’t a part of people’s normal workflow, and the frenzy of an upcoming audit is often stressful and inefficient.
By implementing continuous compliance tracking, the process becomes easier to manage and much faster. With your own automated workflow tool in place, you can create consistent taxonomies for your categories of compliance -- and easily make adjustments as needed. This helps everyone be more efficient by using the same nomenclature, cadences and timing throughout the year. You can also create templates to save time and maintain uniformity year to year.
6. Focus on quality instead of administration.
Most of the energy spent on compliance is wasted on the chaos of evidence collection. Too often, the auditor ends up spending valuable time on site tracking down the information they need or should have already been provided.
Continuous compliance tracking means that audit preparation is ongoing instead of a last-minute scramble. Consequently, you can get the auditor everything they need before the on-site visit. This maximizes the auditor’s time on site, builds your organization’s credibility, and reduces everyone’s stress.
Continuous tracking eliminates the hassle.
Assembling data for an audit doesn’t have to be painful or chaotic. It doesn’t have to be a frantic mess of emails and spreadsheets. Putting a system in place reduces time and effort for everyone involved, which can save your organization thousands of dollars every year.
Thankfully, getting a continuous tracking system in place doesn’t have to be painful, either. Our tools are user-friendly, intuitive and easy to on-board both at the organizational and individual levels. Because our applications are cloud-based, there’s no software to install or cumbersome plug-ins to add to your network. We’ve got a solution that’s flexible, inexpensive and exceptionally easy to get up and running.
With the use of VeilSun’s automated workflow tool for continuous tracking, your organization can make compliance a streamlined and stress-free process, year-round.
