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When the lack of data access affects your employee compliance platform
It’s not fun and games when an organization doesn’t have access to all the data necessary to have a healthy regulatory compliance program. Ensuring regulatory compliance within a company goes beyond necessity; it’s the foundation of business ethics and conduct in today’s digital age. Over the past two decades, with the rapid advancements in data storage and processing technologies, having access to complete data sets has become essential for navigating the ever-changing landscape of the regulatory environment.
Without the right data, compliance efforts are like navigating a maze blindfolded – it heightens risk and could lead to steep regulatory fines, legal troubles, employment risk and irreputable damage to a company’s brand. Organizations need to collect and analyze data comprehensively to properly understand employee activity and whether it adheres to federal, state, and local government laws.
The goal extends beyond merely providing data to the compliance department — it involves spreading knowledge and awareness across an organization, from top management to frontline employees, fostering a culture where everyone feels accountable for identifying potential risks or questionable conduct. The objective is to create a workplace environment where compliance is seen as everyone’s responsibility, not just a task for a specific department. This approach will help build a more vigilant workforce, reducing the likelihood of compliance breaches, with the goal of everyone having a stake in contributing to a safer and more ethical workplace.
WHY IS DATA SO DIFFICULT TO GATHER?
The challenge confronting companies in accessing comprehensive data often stems from siloed teams. In cases where there is no standardized approach to storing and utilizing data, individual divisions operate in silos, leading to fragmented data that hinders accessibility and effective utilization. If a company struggles to enforce consistent rules governing data storage and sharing practices, methods could be endless – from storing data on in-house mainframes to external cloud-based data storage services. Not to mention, the numerous enterprise systems in place across the organization that also create and store data.
Researching and accessing data types, across all types of storage methods can be extremely time-consuming, often yielding incomplete results. Once the data is gathered, the real work starts. If an organization is manually vetting data and not benefitting from automation and machine learning technologies, errors are not only possible, but they are also inevitable, undermining the effectiveness of compliance efforts.
PROVIDING A SOLUTION
As StarCompliance (Star) remains at the forefront of innovation, actively seeking game-changing solutions for the employee compliance industry, the focus on data collection and analysis takes center stage. Recent market research, surveying chief compliance officers and compliance analysts, highlights the disparity in data strategies among respondents. Some have sophisticated approaches, others do not. Notably, 35% of respondents surveyed do not work with data scientists, meaning they are stitching data together themselves.
To enhance its offerings to the community, Star has teamed up with Snowflake, a leading data cloud provider, to introduce Secure Data Access (SDA). This first-to-market solution provides Star clients with secure, unrestricted access to their data, which they can take and use outside the STAR Platform. This groundbreaking solution allows users to push data into downstream systems, co-mingle data from across an organization, and use Business Intelligence (BI) tools with ease— all in the name of reducing regulatory risk and financial penalties. In addition, this partnership improves and enhances the effectiveness and accuracy of conflict-of-interest detection, human resources training, as well as operational productivity.
Harnessing Snowflake’s data warehouse capabilities, Star’s SDA enables data-on-demand services empowering clients to collaborate locally and globally, uncover fresh insights more quickly and provides seamless cooperation to break down silos within an organization, as well as with its partners, suppliers and customers.
To read more about the need for proper data collection and analysis, as well as Star’s SDA solution, download our latest executive brief, Harnessing The Power of 'Big Data' in Compliance.
