Within modern-day business effective compliance has become an absolute necessity; however, compliance teams are often bogged down by the copious amount of work that goes into identifying and keeping up with the constant change of regulation. Oftentimes the continual change is too much for organizations to handle and thus organizations are required to deploy various techniques and strategies in order to stay on top of their compliance needs.
One such strategy is referred to as regulatory mapping. Regulatory mapping is a term and strategy that can be deployed by organizations to gain a more in-depth understanding and view of their compliance obligations and environment. With that in mind, however, regulatory mapping is a relatively broad term that encapsulates such a large range of issues. It is important for organizations to fully understand the depth of regulatory mapping the best employ it for its compliance needs. Here are the three main areas in which regulatory mapping is used.
· Identifying rules and regulations. Regulatory mapping is often believed to be and referred to as the continuous examination of upcoming regulatory texts in order to identify what rules and regulations from those texts apply to the organization. This often involves numerous members of the compliance team constantly searching for and analyzing numerous documents. This can become even more complex as organizations must not only analyze baseline compliance standards but compare them to various jurisdictions that the organization operates within. While this is a critical aspect of maintaining effective compliance it can often be extremely time-consuming and labor heavy. So much so that organizations often choose to outsource the work to save time for other compliance needs.
· Changing existing obligations. Identifying new regulations is not the only concern for organizations as standards for pre-existing obligations can change at a moment's notice. In addition to keeping up with newly implemented regulations, compliance teams are tasked with the responsibility of scouring the internet and news feeds for changes to existing regulations. Organizations must analyze these changes and determine how it impacts current controls. In many cases previously deployed controls require modification or some are rendered completely obsolete due to the changes. Similar to the previous point, this requires organizations and their compliance teams to dedicate a significant amount of time and resources to ensuring that no regulatory change is missed, and the specified obligations are changed and updated accordingly.
· Internal controls. As part of the regulatory mapping process organizations must utilize the knowledge they have gained to create and implement various controls, policies, and processes to ensure that operations meet the stated requirements. A deep understanding of the compliance environment does very little if the organization is unable to deploy effective controls that allow for the organization to remain compliant.
Regulatory mapping is a key element to the success of any compliance framework but can quickly become too difficult to manage.Oftentimes organizations rely on the use of manual processes for their regulatory mapping needs, and this can quickly become time-consuming and expensive. Organizations should consider the implementation of AI and automation to better enhance efficiency and accuracy. By converting manual processes to automated one’s organizations rely on AI to scan the internet for compliance changes that tie directly into their obligations. The AI can then streamline this information for further analysis with a success rate of 99.5%.This will free up time for compliance teams to conduct more complex assessments while limiting the need for tedious tasks that enhance the chance of human error.
Effective compliance is a necessity for organizations of all kinds and failure to meet specific obligations can result in serious fines or reputational loss. Organizations must employ all the tools available to them to bolster their compliance capabilities and remain on top of their obligations.
