Compliance Brings Benefits
One of the biggest reasons to achieve a compliance standard is to win and retain business, setting yourself apart from the competition by showing that you have met a level of quality/security, as an example.
It can be a requirement for obtaining Government or Public body contracts or allow you to at least bid for them. A lot of Government contracts stipulate that you need to have Cyber Essentials.
Let’s briefly look at the potential benefits of achieving the Lexcel Standard which is the Law Society’s legal practice mark.
•Increased retention rates of clients due to a superior customer service experience,
•As an organisation you will have a more effective risk management process which will result in fewer complaints,
•It will provide you with a competitive advantage,
•Having the Lexcel Standard of Compliance can help you to stand out from competitors during a bidding process,
•Increased profitability and efficiency,
•Access lower insurance premiums and receive favourable treatment from insurers.
The benefits can be the same for any Compliance Standard that you achieve especially Industry specific ones.
Some Compliance Standards have to be achieved for some business operations such as PCI DSS Compliance which means you can process and handle credit card transactions and their associated data. With more card transactions happening due to the COVID19 Pandemic have you achieved this Compliance Standard? It is not a one-off exercise it has to be managed and ensured that compliance is being met all the time, if you are not compliant you can lose the ability to process credit card transactions, what impact would that have on your business?
FCA Compliance is a Statutory requirement for organisations that operate within Financial Services so maintenance of this is second nature as they must have it to operate within that sector.
Remember that all the above Compliance standards are over and above your requirement to be GDPR compliant! That can mean a lot of time spent on managing compliance.
No compliance standard is a one-off exercise, it’s a continual process. Inevitably, it can get added as an additional responsibility to someone’s ever-growing workload which means the management of the compliance standard can become all-consuming, impacting productivity and efficiency as well as increasing costs. Achieving a Compliance Standard is something you should enter into with eyes wide open.
A lot of standards have the same controls to be implemented and because the standard covers different business areas or units you can have multiple people duplicating tasks instead of in tandem, together as a team. As an example, you may end up with the person who is responsible for business insurance being tasked twice or more with providing copies of insurance policies therefore duplicating the task and effort for them. This can happen in any size of business. This decreases the efficiency and productivity of all involved and can make compliance seen as a negative task as opposed to the positive task that it is with the benefits it brings.
Creating a Compliance/Security culture within your organisation will make it become second nature so removing any negative outlook from the process is important to success, take people along the journey, dragging them doesn’t work so well!
Achieving a Compliance Standard can be costly both in time and money, but the benefits can outweigh those costs if you are able to manage the process efficiently and continually as opposed to a last minute panic!
Keeping key stakeholders updated with progress is a key factor for several reasons, to ensure that any required resources are made available and they can be your champion in making any necessary business process changes, these are a small example.
Meeting, and exceeding, Compliance Standards adds value to your organisation if not viewed and treated as a chore.
Actisoft Technology offers a Compliance Management software solution, please see our product page – Compliance Manager. We also offer Cyber Security Services and Products, including Security Awareness Training, to ensure that you can Work Securely, Everywhere, Everytime. This works whether you are in an office, from home and even the local coffee shop. Talk to us about how we can partner to ensure that your business is secure from current, new and emerging threats.