Compliance Documentation and Expiration Tracking Simplified by Workflow Automation
Key takeaways
- Compliance tracking is essential for timely delivery of high quality contracts.
- Accurate compliance documentation ensures that compliance and regulatory standards are adhered to.
- Compliance tracking is the process of monitoring and evaluating the company’s adherence to relevant laws, regulations, industry standards, and contractual obligations.
- Compliance documentation involves the organization and tracking of different information within the business.
- Effective tracking of compliance documents ensures that your team is compliant and you avoid hefty penalties for non-compliance.
- Most companies rely on regulatory laws for expiration tracking.
What is Compliance Documentation?
Compliance documentation refers to the process of documenting specific records or information reports that can attest to achieving compliance with specific framework. A comprehensive compliance documentation system acts as a backbone to showcase your organization’s adherence to regulatory standards. Navigating through compliance documents with the help of conventional methods can be challenging owing to constantly evolving policies and frameworks.
A compliance documentation system must maintain version histories, the intricacies of managing many moving parts and processes with SOPs for each. Having a well-defined compliance documentation system is not just a regulatory checkbox, but also an indispensable tool for safeguarding data integrity and managing risks effectively. Organizations use compliance documentation to prove that they comply with the regulatory compliance requirements.
Every compliance documentation requires to follow specific guidelines as per framework. You can choose from single frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA or you can implement multiple frameworks together. Key steps in compliance documentation are policies and procedures, recovery and remediation plans, and data protection policies.
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What is Expiration Tracking?
Expiration tracking refers to the monitoring of contract status and expiration dates for all contracts and policies. Contract tracking and compliance management can be a significant challenge for legal teams, contract managers,sales teams, and other professionals.
Manual compliance documentation and expiration tracking systems may work well for organizations with low contract volumes and contract complexity. When the volumes increase, they are going to need more than a contract tracking spreadsheet. A compliance documentation and expiration tracking tool comes in handy for managing compliance documents and tracking expiration dates.
Components of Compliance Documentation
Good compliance documentation requires you to document all processes, procedures, and guidelines in a business. Beginning with adoption of written policies to making corrective action – a compliance documentation program covers the following aspects.
1- Establish and adopt written policies, procedures, and standards of conduct
The first step is to set a goal and create uniformity among employees.
2- Program oversight
The next step is to assign a team to oversee, monitor, and enforce the compliance program. This team is considered the company’s watchdog for compliance management.
3- Providing training and Education
All employees need to be trained on compliance documentation regardless of their job title. Initial training and annual refresher courses will keep employees tuned to the company’s compliance policies.
4- 2-Way communication
Promptly communicating with the company’s compliance department and watchdogs is crucial. It is important to maintain a seamless communication channel and report non-compliance behaviors and ethical issues in the workplace for maintaining effectiveness of the compliance documentation.
5- Monitoring and auditing
You want to ensure that your compliance program is effective by monitoring and measuring employee response and ensuring that the frequency of compliance infractions is minimal.
6- Discipline
Teams need to ensure that consistent discipline is enforced across all employees promptly. It is important that you do not hold employees of a higher title to a lesser standard.
7- Corrective action
While disciplinary action is essential, it is also important to ensure that you can correct employee actions. If employees end up stepping out of the program, their absence will also serve as a reminder of the code of conduct.
Challenges in Manual Compliance Documentation and Tracking
Managing compliance documentation presents organizations with various obstacles to achieve regulatory adherence. The challenges range from complexities in time consumption to keeping up with changing regulations. Some of the main challenges in compliance documentation and expiration tracking are listed below –
Time consuming
Compliance documentation is a time consuming process when done manually. Manual processes often involve performing repetitive entries, managing cumbersome spreadsheets, tracking various versions of updates of policies, etc. Small to medium sized businesses often lack the resources for managing the process.
Compliance training
Compliance teams need to be trained on compliance documentation since inadequacies in training can cause inefficiencies in the implementation of procedures and policies. More time and effort needs to go into training employees on the details of compliance documentation.
Staying updated
Evolving regulatory landscape makes it difficult to stay on top of the latest industry practices and regulations. The challenge lies in maintaining various versions of documents, regularly updating policies, and rolling out new processes to showcase compliance with changing regulations.
Missing out contract expirations
Vendor contracts need to be renewed on time. Important documents need to be tracked regularly to ensure that they are up to date. Contract expirations need to be tracked so that the organization can be protected from any legal or financial repercussions related to compliance issues.
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Automating Compliance Documentation and Expiration Tracking
Accurate compliance documentation is crucial for any organization, it helps build significant credibility with clients in proving that you follow necessary compliance standards and prevent you from regulatory risks and legal investigations. Organizations can help you avoid heavy fines and lawsuits by tracking all compliance activities. External auditors use compliance documentation to verify that you are aligned with the certification requirements and reduce the downtime in getting the certification.
Workflow automation can streamline compliance documentation and expiration tracking, so that organizations are always on top of their compliance documentation. A no code workflow automation solution like Cflow can automate compliance documentation and expiration tracking. You can manage all your documents in one place with automation software. Contract expiration reminders are automatically sent to the compliance team so they don’t miss out on any deadlines.
Automating compliance documentation and expiration tracking provides the following benefits –
Staying on top of compliance
A compliance documentation software provides a centralized place to monitor status of compliance documents. From gathering documents to tracking them, everything can be done from one place with automation software.
Doing away with paperwork
Managing paperwork in manual compliance documentation can be overwhelming for the team. Collecting and tracking notices, safety documents, insurance certificates, all of these tasks can be digitized so that paperwork involved is minimized.
Avoid hefty fines
Automating compliance documentation helps in tracking document statuses and ensures that the team is compliant. Automated alerts are issued to stakeholders on the status of compliance documents and expiration dates.
Compliance templates
You can collect and track non-standard documents that are custom to your organization. The templates provided by the software can be used to create custom compliance documentation workflows as per your business requirements.
Expiration alerts
Automated alerts on expiration dates are issued to stakeholders so that they can resolve expiration policies.
Document collection
When an invoice is submitted, certificates of insurance, notices, safety documents, and financials are gathered and presented to the stakeholders in a centralized location.
Avoiding unnecessary auto-renewals
An automation software issues alerts to the designated authority with details on whether a particular asset is being used and to what extent, and whether to negotiate or cancel the contract.
More accurate budgeting
An automation software provides details on the usage of software and hardware, so you can make informed decisions based on data, and create a budget that reflects the real needs of the company.
Ensures service continuity
A compliance documentation automation software helps track statuses of documents and also ensure that documents do not fall unexpectedly. Agents also get time to negotiate with the supplier with enough time to avoid a service interruption.
Why is Cflow the right Workflow Solution?
An AI-based no-code workflow automation solution like Cflow uses a visual form builder to create compliance documentation workflows. Users just need to specify details on the contract expiration date, and available licenses, set a date to identify the automated action, and explain what the automation is about. Here are the top reasons why Cflow is the right automation solution for compliance documentation and expiration tracking-
Routing and notifications
Cflow offers a wide range of options for routing tasks and notifying the concerned individual. The sophisticated rules engine in Cflow is designed and presented in a format that is just right for business users.
Auto approvals
You can easily configure rules so that they can be auto approved. This feature saves time and enables the teams to be more efficient.
SLAs and Escalations
The SLAs and escalations feature in Cflow allows users to stay informed at all times on what is expected of them and maintain a transparent work environment.
Document designer
The document designer in Cflow supports a wide range of custom elements that can help elevate the overall look and presentation of formal office documents.
Conclusion
Managing compliance documents and tracking expiration dates can be challenging without the right workflow software. Cflow can be the right compliance documentation and expiration tracking you are looking for. If you are ready to try Cflow for free, all you need to do is sign up for the free trial.
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