How To Effectively Manage Risk and Compliance

Mar 21

3 min read

Managing risk and compliance is complex. Staying up to date with all of your specific business requirements to meet certifications, following compliance processes to adhere to relevant laws and regulations, supplying external auditors with timely access to accurate information, manually mapping controls and managing compliance frameworks … the list goes on.

And the risk of getting it wrong? All of the costs associated with losing certifications, the costs associated with legal implications, wasted time manually aggregating and checking spreadsheets, and hours spent downloading and submitting evidence to auditors. Simply put: a lot of time and money.

So how are organizations doing risk and compliance right? Those successfully managing operations are doing these three things:

Centralizing all compliance activities onto one platform
Systemizing their tasks to proactively manage risk and compliance needs
Streamlining their audit processes

Perhaps you’re wondering how organizations do this or perhaps you’ve already searched for a governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solution and come up short. According to the Association for Federal Enterprise Risk Management, the majority of these out-of-the-box solutions only provide about 60% of what is needed, leaving organizations in charge of managing custom configurations to fit their business. Without the internal tech resources to do so, companies are left with just another solution that doesn’t fill the full gap.

This is why Zimpatica built Zimpatica Compliance Navigator on Appian’s flexible, low-code platform. We’ve combined extensive GRC expertise with industry leading Appian developers to deliver this integrated GRC solution that allows organizations to systemize compliance and risk efforts for real-time visibility.

Centralizing all compliance activities onto one platform

If you’re a compliance officer, you already know that compliance investigations can take anywhere from a few days to several months, involving multiple departments, reviewers, and artifacts. Controls for each requirement need to be tracked as well as the specific actions around it, including the time consuming action of supplying evidence.

Zimpatica Compliance Navigator takes the time out of maintaining compliance by centralizing governance across regulatory frameworks, third-party vendors, and company assets. This solution’s easy-to-use interface allows users to create new frameworks that fit their business needs, map requirements and controls to requirements, and specify owner, reviewer frequency, and evidence required. Plus, Zimpatica’s developers are there every step of the way, assisting with setting up frameworks and processes for customers.

Systemizing tasks to proactively manage risk and compliance

How many hours do you or your team spend checking compliance spreadsheets, designing mitigation plans, connecting these plans to risk incidents, or uploading evidence?

Zimpatica Compliance Navigator systemizes risk and compliance efforts to relieve stress by sending reminders before a control is due. Users can set systematic cadences for email alerts, tasks, and reviewers to easily and proactively stay ahead of needs.

Organizations also need the ability to track risks to control threats, and with Zimpatica Compliance Navigator, users can track active risks, their severity, origination and lifecycle — whether it’s IT, operational, legal, regulatory or other. Easily set alerts for high risk scenarios or when a mitigation plan is needed.

Streamlining audit processes

For compliance professionals, Zimpatica Compliance Navigator will save significant time during audit periods. No more hours spent tracking down evidence or figuring out the best way to collaborate with third parties. Auditors can now log into this solution, and organizations can choose which compliance frameworks auditors have access to. Frameworks can also be exported and sent.

Users report that Zimpatica Compliance Navigator has reduced audit coordination time by 50%. When leveraging the right solution, saving time and resources can be simple.

If managing risk and compliance continues to be an issue for you, contact Zimpatica, and we’ll show you how our GRC solution can help you: