While 83-percent of organizations participating in the 2017 Protiviti Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Survey have plans to automate at least some of their compliance process within the next year, many struggle to find solutions that accommodate their GRC compliance processes. Many GRC systems today fall short of allowing companies to customize it according to their internal controls processes, leaving few options aside from homegrown, manual processes.
While enterprises look for GRC automation solutions, decision makers need to ensure the system is customizable to the organization’s business processes. Compliance is dynamic, with changing requirements from external auditors, regulators, and the government itself, making it necessary to have a flexible system that can adapt to updates.
A static compliance platform that requires your process to accommodate to its environment leaves little room for adjustments, often resulting in less than optimal compliance for your organization. Ideally, you want to define your process and then configure your solution and supporting technology to drive your controls and processes in the right direction for your organization.
A dynamic compliance platform will allow your organization to adapt to increased scrutiny and inspections from auditors, and continuous development of the COSO internal control framework. These changing expectations can cause an increase in audit fees and other expenses, but you can use automated controls powerful enough to ensure a strong internal control environment by providing:
- Controlled access to data and sharing capabilities
- Compliance with key business processes/controls
- Audit trails and traceability
- Secure collaboration
- Notifications and escalations
- Workflow and task management
- Integrated, real-time reporting
- Automation of monitoring and execution tools
- Facilitating communication
- Fully customizable executive dashboards
