The Role of Compliance Software tagged: , , , , ,

The Role of Compliance Software

Posted by in Business


One of the newest buzz words in the job market is the ‘compliance job’ under various titles, such as ‘Chief Compliance Officer’, ‘Compliance Manager’ ‘Compliance Analyst’ etc., whether it is in banking, healthcare or other industry. Whenever one hears the word compliance, most people would be thinking of the financial industry as the word is closely associated with financial compliance, in general. However, compliance is closely associated with regulatory compliance, whereby governments all over the world issue rules and regulations to control the business activities of the top management and make them socially accountable for their corporate actions, such as Sarbanes Oxley Act of the US.

So, the duty of a Chief Compliance Officer primarily is to oversee and manage the compliance within an organization. He is directly accountable to the CEO in ensuring that the policies and procedures of the organization are well defined and followed by every person in the organization. So he must be a person who has managerial experience with up to date knowledge of the laws and regulations and who is capable of overseeing the monitoring and implementation of the compliance program of the organization.

Keeping abreast of the compliance program is a very difficult task. The paper works related to the program are enormous and keeping track of the latest developments in the form of amendments and enactment of new rules make the process a very tedious one, which naturally compels the compliance management to look for suitable compliance products such as Compliance Officer or Financial Compliance software. Many compliance management software packages are available in the market, some are tailor made to ensure the compliance of the regulations and others are configurable to suit the needs of the organization.

While choosing compliance products, the main factors to be taken into consideration are (1) the cost- whether it is helping to reduce the cost of IT and Audit departments, while ensuring the continuous and proactive compliance (2)the compliance itself – whether the software incorporates modules to ensure the internal management of every known rules and regulations and (3) the remedy – whether it can detect and suggest remedial measures to non-compliance so that the fines and other related costs can be avoided. The prime importance should be given to financial compliance software, as it is the main area where non-compliance is prevalent in many organizations.

As the job of ensuring corporate compliance becomes more integrated and complex, the use of compliance software to aid executives in the performance of their task is assured.