Compliance is not only essential for small and medium-sized businesses to safeguard against legal issues and costly penalties but also in protecting the safety of your customers and operations as a whole.
That said, the cost of non-compliance can be high. For GDPR noncompliance, fines start at $11 million, or 2% of a company’s annual revenue for corporate abuses and the disclosure of user information.
Making sure your SMB is compliant at all times is essential, and compliance officers can help to oversee and manage regulatory issues within businesses. But what measures can be taken to ensure that instances of noncompliance are quickly discovered and resolved before wider issues emerge? Let’s explore six essential measures that all businesses should take to better manage their compliance:
1. Expert Advice can Come in Many Forms
For SMBs, accessing expert advice can be a challenge due to budgetary constraints and a lack of resources, but it’s possible to gain plenty of insights into your compliance obligations through a number of alternative sources for added guidance.
One great way to gain some vital guidance is to look out for the free newsletters and webinars created by law and consulting firms surrounding regulatory trends. Another great strategy is to join industry associations or local business groups to access more focused guidance and standards surrounding your niche.
In addition to this, if your business is part of a larger supply chain for a major corporation, it could be worth seeking support from your partners to help follow your regulatory compliance. It’s in your supply chain’s interest that your operations stand up to scrutiny, and this can help you to access insights at a lower cost.
2. Utilize Technology for Compliance Monitoring
Tools that automate compliance monitoring are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the age of artificial intelligence.
Machine learning (ML), a subset of AI, is a powerful tool for monitoring compliance anomalies while keeping up to date with relevant regulatory updates to ensure that compliant processes don’t risk becoming non-compliant overnight.
The adoption of these technologies can be an asset to SMBs that wouldn’t have the financial muscle to employ a compliance officer but still need extra help in managing national and international regulatory commitments.
3. Seeking International Guidance
For SMBs that operate or sell products internationally, enlisting the advice of compliance specialists in key jurisdictions can be an excellent way of managing the diverse regulatory requirements of different markets.
Some regulatory authorities can be more complex and challenging to keep up with than others. Other geographical locations, like Latin America, can be a great market to tap into but may be made more complex due to language barriers. By enlisting the help of specialist agencies, your SMB can expand into new markets without the risk of unwanted noncompliance fines.
4. Pursue Data Consolidation
By unifying your customer data both online and offline, regardless of whether it’s structured or unstructured, you can significantly ramp up your organization of the information you gather to ensure a more holistic compliance overview.
This data can be taken from your front-end or back-end, and consolidating it into a single access point means that you can not only protect the information you have at your disposal but also gain powerful customer insights that can help to shape your direction and operational efficiency in the future.
Customer data platforms (CDPs) can help to provide these unified insights, and your access to powerful customer insights can not only improve your regulatory compliance but will also help to shape marketing campaigns based on metrics like customer birthdays or their purchasing behavior.
5. Monitor the Time Taken to Identify Issues
One key literal measure to take into account is the time it takes for your SMB’s internal systems to identify a compliance issue.
By averaging how long it takes for issues to be discovered and resolved, you can create a meantime for issue discovery.
This metric means that you can assess whether your existing frameworks are fit for purpose in real time without the risk of inefficiencies pushing you into regulatory hot water.
6. Remember to Run Audits Regularly
You may believe that you have sufficient compliance monitoring frameworks, but it really pays to run regular audits to ensure that your operations won’t fall under the scrutiny of regulators.
Schedule regular compliance audits to make sure that your existing and future processes won’t push your SMB into a regulatory gray area, and run checks to ensure that your compliance tools are up to date and operating without any hitches.
While these checks may seem like extra hassle, they can be highly rewarding should you discover any processes that push your operations into non-compliance.
Protecting Your Business
These measures help to keep your business safe from regulatory issues and the danger of losing customer trust through non-compliance.
By blending external and technological insight with manual auditing, you can create a slick operation that remains committed to its regulatory obligations at all times. This can leave you with the confidence to focus on optimizing other areas of your business and secure sustainable growth without the fear of unwanted costly fines around the corner.
