It is estimated that 48% of organizations use spreadsheets to manage risks and monitor compliance. Despite this popularity, spreadsheets are not the optimal tool because they don’t scale, require enormous maintenance, and don’t offer the benefits of a database. Also, with the growing complexity of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) processes, organizations need an automated tool to collect data, analyze them, identify gaps, and suggest remedies.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a business automation process that can implement a workflow without human intervention. With the right configuration, it can efficiently streamline and execute different GRC tasks.
In this article, let’s see how RPA can help with compliance monitoring.
Role of RPA in Compliance Monitoring
Below are some ways by which RPAs can help with your compliance monitoring.
On-demand Reporting
Many organizations store data across different systems, leading to incompatible data silos. RPA tools can collect and analyze data from these multiple systems to provide rich insights. Besides increasing transparency and accountability, you can use this data to make appropriate decisions. It can also come in handy for generating real-time reports on demand.
Continuous Monitoring
One of the main challenges in compliance is the need for continuous monitoring. Traditional methods often require periodic checks that can miss ongoing issues. RPA can continuously monitor transactions, system logs, and other relevant data points to ensure constant compliance. This high vigilance can detect non-compliance problems early, saving you the risk of penalties and reputational damage.
Audit Trail
RPA helps you maintain an accurate and detailed audit trail, as it can automatically log every action it performs. This systematic collection process creates a comprehensive and tamper-proof audit trail. In turn, it simplifies the audit process and provides regulators with the necessary documentation quickly and accurately. With such a well-organized audit trail, you save time and effort while ensuring accurate evidence.
Regulatory Updates
Keeping up with regulatory changes is a significant challenge, and RPA can help by automating the process of monitoring regulatory updates. Bots can scan regulatory websites and databases for changes, helping you stay informed about new requirements. With such a proactive approach, you can adapt your compliance strategies to match the regulatory changes.
Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is complex and an area where many organizations falter. This is evident from the regular cyber breaches and other security incidents. The good news is you can use RPA to assess and mitigate risks proactively. RPAs can automate the collection and analysis of risk-related data. More importantly, they can gather information from various sources like financial reports, market data, and internal records, to provide a comprehensive view of potential risks. Using this information, you can identify and mitigate risks more efficiently, reducing the potential losses and associated downtime.
Incident Management
While identifying non-compliance is one part, quick remedial action is what makes the process truly efficient. RPAs can help by streamlining the incident management process. They can automate the identification, tracking, and resolution of compliance incidents. Moreover, these bots can generate alerts, assign tasks to the appropriate personnel, and track the progress of incident resolution. Such an automated approach ensures a swift and coordinated response to compliance issues, reducing the potential impact on the organization.
Vendor Management
Third-party vendors are a potential risk because you have little control over their operations. At the same time, managing these risks is essential for compliance. RPA can help by automating the process of vendor onboarding, monitoring, and assessment. They can verify vendor credentials, track performance metrics, and ensure that vendors comply with contractual obligations and regulatory requirements. This automation boosts compliance while improving the efficiency of vendor management processes.
Cost Reduction
As organizations grapple with limited budgets, RPAs can offer the balance you need between monitoring and cost savings. With these tools, you can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, reducing the need for manual labor. As a result, your operational costs are reduced while your efficiency and accuracy increase. Moreover, there will be fewer compliance breaches and associated fines, further contributing to cost reduction.
Scalability
Compliance is becoming more complex due to a growing number of regulations. Moreover, as you expand and scale, your operations may touch different geographical jurisdictions, requiring you to adhere to multiple laws. RPA offers scalability that traditional compliance monitoring methods cannot match. You can easily scale these tools up or down based on your needs, allowing for flexible and efficient compliance management. This scalability ensures that compliance processes can adapt to the changing requirements of a growing organization.
Integration with Existing Systems
A good thing about RPAs is that they can be integrated with existing systems and tools. This means you don’t need an expensive overhaul to include automation. Moreover, you can leverage your current investments in technology while benefiting from the added efficiency and accuracy of RPA.
In all, implementing RPAs can have a far-reaching impact on your compliance processes and their efficiency.
Next, let’s look at the challenges to keep an eye out for.
Challenges and Considerations
While RPA offers many benefits for compliance monitoring, there are challenges and considerations to consider before implementing them.
Implementation Costs
The initial cost of implementing RPA can be high, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Carefully evaluate the return on investment (ROI) and consider long-term benefits when deciding to adopt RPA.
Change Management
Implementing RPA requires changes to existing workflows and processes. Provide adequate training to employees and implement change management strategies to facilitate a smooth transition.
Data Security
As RPA involves handling sensitive data, data security strategies are key to safeguard privacy and ensure compliance. Implement a combination of different robust security measures to protect data from unauthorized access and breaches.
Maintenance and Updates
RPA systems require ongoing maintenance and updates to remain effective. Allocate resources for regular maintenance and ensure that RPAs are updated to handle new regulatory requirements.
With these considerations, you are all set to leverage the power of RPAs to improve the efficiency and accuracy of compliance monitoring.
Wrapping Up
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can automate repetitive tasks, ensure data accuracy, and provide real-time insights – all of which can take compliance monitoring to new heights. While there are challenges to consider, the benefits of RPA in compliance monitoring far outweigh them. You can implement the measures discussed in this article to make RPAs a valuable tool to improve your compliance posture.