As the regulatory environment grows more taxing, compliance in every field from health and safety to supply chain management can become an all-consuming activity. Businesses need a strategy for ensuring compliance is done right, as efficiently as possible.
Compliance teams are under increasing pressure from multiple parties. On one hand, these include regulatory authorities, supervisory bodies and the public. On the other hand, are the board, C-level executives and other business stakeholders who expect compliance to prevent business disruptions yet keep the organisation safe from penalties, legal ramifications and reputational damage.
As these demands continue to escalate, the compliance workload is not likely to ease up any time soon. In fact, it’s only going to get more and more challenging to meet today and tomorrow’s obligations using yesterday’s methods.
Compliance processes can no longer rely on traditional tools, such as unwieldly, siloed spreadsheets. While Excel in itself remains an invaluable business tool, an over-reliance on spreadsheets can lead to a situation that some call ‘Excel Hell’.
How do you know when you’re in Excel Hell?
Admin overload If your team is spending an excessive amount of time developing and maintaining complex spreadsheets, or a paper-based system extracting and consolidating data, checking formulae and making sure links are functional—you’re at risk of process delays, compliance gaps and employee burnout. No-one wants a situation where compliance experts spend more time checking data is accurate than they can devote to critical analysis and planning.
Mistakes keep tripping you up Even when everyone involved in data processing takes extreme care to keep the integrity of the spreadsheet data intact, human error happens. A small typo in one worksheet can have a ripple effect on multiple other documents, which can be an incredibly time-consuming issue to fix.
Multiple versions of the truth With various spreadsheets being managed by different individuals and teams, there’s no single source of truth. When these datasets are emailed around and updated in disjointed ways, how do you know for sure that you’re basing your reporting and decision-making on current and accurate data, every time? If you’re using spreadsheets to manage your spreadsheets, you know you’re in trouble.
Collaboration obstacles All too often, a solo workbook owner is the only employee who knows how to use a particular document and update the formulae within it. This can get in the way of seamless collaboration and team productivity. The outcomes? Bottlenecks, burnout and the risk of data loss if that spreadsheet owner is unable to work or leaves the organisation. All these sticking points increase the compliance workload, elevate frustration levels and expose an organisation to a wide variety of risks. As your business grows, these problems will snowball.
Is automation the answer? Using a cloud-based compliance management solution alongside your other business tools helps to reduce your reliance on spreadsheets, cut back on manual work and reduce risk considerably. With an automated solution like iPRO, all your compliance datasets—along with other credentials like licences and certificates—are managed on one platform. This way, you have a single source of truth that can be accessed easily, in real-time, by multiple users.
With all your data in one place, verified and updated automagically, reporting on compliance and risk becomes an effortless task. Beyond the time and effort saved, you also have a complete and clear audit trail of data and activity across your compliance processes.
Further, delegating much of your manual work to an automated solution allows you to implement better data security measures. iPRO’s solutions and systems are ISO 27001 certified, which acts as a guarantee to our clients and suppliers that we are continually implementing proactive, best-practice information security methods that take account of all risks, susceptibilities and impacts. All personal and sensitive data assets remain secure within our platform.
If you feel like your compliance team needs to find a better balance between spreadsheets and automation, iPRO can work collaboratively with you to offer the services and solutions you need to take your compliance approach to the next level.
We can also help you to create a more responsive compliance team that spends less time on low-value data processing and more time on work that delivers the most value to your business. Ready to elevate compliance? Schedule a free, no obligation demo to discover the benefits of automating compliance with iPRO.