Digital Fitness Builds Compliance Confidence
PWC’s Global Risk, Internal Audit and Compliance Survey of 2,000 executives found that as organisations move through digital transformation, digitally fit compliance programmes make better decisions and take smarter, better-informed risks. The same survey found that a compliance programme’s digital fitness should match that of its organisation, so the three lines of defence move together.
Most compliance functions know this in principle. The six habits below show what the leaders do to put it into practice.
Habit One: Compliance Is Built Into the Design
Compliance functions that get this right are engaged with every transformation and digital programme from the design stage. That means assessing the compliance risk and cost of every investment initiative before it launches. It works when compliance leaders can see the organisation’s digital operating model: the structure that describes how processes are executed.
Habit Two: Skills Follow the Operating Model
Digital programmes call for process analysis, data literacy and enough technical fluency to know where automation is viable. That skill set is easier to build when the operating model is visible, because it gives new hires and existing staff a shared reference for how the business runs, alongside the knowledge held by whoever has been there longest.
Habit Three: Move From Reactive to Predictive
Predictive compliance identifies where a control is weakening before it fails. That shift comes from integrating automation, robotic process automation and AI into the operating model, so Risk, Compliance and Audit work from connected tools where many organisations still run three separate toolsets.
Habit Four: Real-Time Visibility
Innovative functions build real-time dashboards that monitor operational execution as it happens and flag anomalies against regulatory requirements directly, in place of waiting for a sampling exercise. It does not have to be purely data-driven. Human workflow automation lets people flag and self-assess risk as part of the process itself, configured to the specific requirements of the business.
Habit Five: Compliance Sits in the Room Where Digital Decisions Get Made
Functions that show up in the design phase of a digital initiative shape it before the architecture is locked. That rests on a working relationship with the teams running those initiatives, built well before a launch date.
Habit Six: One Model Across the Three Functions
Harmonising Risk, Compliance and Internal Audit around a single source of operational data reduces investment and increases what each function can see. A data lake helps, and the extra ingredient is understanding which process activities and tasks consume, transform or create each data point, because that is where compliance is achieved. A shared dashboard is strongest when it sits on one connected process view.
The Common Thread
Every one of these habits builds on the same foundation: a compliance function that can see the organisation’s operating model as well as its policy documents. With that visibility, digital fitness becomes a demonstrable capability.
Which of the six habits does your compliance function already practise, and which one would you like to unlock next by making the operating model clearer? Talk to IGX about it.