Compliance and Risk Management

Who uses compliance and risk management software, and why?

Businesses of all types and sizes benefit from using compliance and risk management software to reduce the risk exposure of business activities conducted in regulated transactions or industries. Otherwise, a company risks regulatory investigations, fines, litigation, and possible direct oversight and monitoring of its actions by a government regulator.

What features does compliance and risk management software include?

Compliance and risk management software features include law and regulatory information, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and Sarbanes Oxley. The software matches customers' activities to legal requirements, supplies specific policy and technical controls to identify and manage risk, and provides extensive auditing, exception notifications, and reporting capabilities. Software in this tech category can also automate compliance monitoring and reporting, organize relevant records for investigations, and empower the compliance team with powerful search and information filtering.

LawNext Directory features associated with the compliance and risk management category include Compliance Rules Management and Auditing, Consumer Data Privacy Compliance, and Contract Risk Scoring.

How can my company use compliance and risk management software?

Compliance and risk management software can match legal requirements to business activities, processes, and workflows and monitor and report the company's compliance status to executives, stakeholders, regulatory bodies, and financial exchanges. The software should alert or notify stakeholders of exceptions when risk levels reach configured thresholds.

Should I select an all-in-one compliance and risk management software or point solutions targeting acute regulatory issues?

Traditional compliance and risk management software is all-in-one, designed to match law and regulatory compliance requirements to business activities, transactions, and reporting needs. This software package makes for a complex deployment companywide and requires a year-over-year commitment of labor and budget to stay on track, keep out of regulatory crosshairs, and be free of sanctions. Short of an all-in-one package, you can identify and prioritize high-risk areas and choose a point solution to provide compliance and risk management. There are point solutions for contract lifecycle management, onboarding of new customers and employees, procurement, and e-discovery to defensibly collect, review, preserve and export data for litigation, investigations, and audits.

If your company is not ready to roll out all-in-one software or a point solution, use search engine technology to supply a compliance team with search and filtering capabilities. Search technology can automate compliance monitoring by finding and using current data and output from processes and workflows and organizing relevant records for audits and investigations.

Should I choose cloud-based compliance and risk management software or on-premises software?

Due to the sensitive nature of corporate compliance data and reporting, most companies prefer to operate compliance and risk management software on-premises behind their firewall and security frameworks. But if most of the data requiring monitoring and reporting are in the cloud, then cloud-based compliance and risk management might fit better. Whether you choose cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on-premise software, ensure it can work with your data everywhere.

Consider on-premises compliance and risk management software if you need to meet stringent client data security and privacy requirements or integrate with legacy systems that cloud-based software cannot access without difficulty. You must have sufficient IT budget and resources to support and maintain an on-premises deployment, which is a long-term commitment that can extend years and even span the business’s existence.

What should I expect to pay for compliance and risk management software?

Point solutions for compliance and risk management focused on one or few compliance requirements can be less than $100 per user per month (billed annually). The company size and the number of regulated areas generally dictate the price for all-in-one compliance and risk management software. All-in-one software can cost thousands of dollars per year in multi-year commitments.