Why comply?
Ask yourself this. How would you feel if an organisation that held your personal information was poorly secured and managed? What if a security breach meant that all of your private details, passwords, addresses and credit card details were leaked, and the company refused to be held responsible for the loss of personal and valuable information?
This is why compliance is critical in all businesses and we will explain how workflow can assist with managing compliance.
Compliance management is a critical component of the internal control process for any organisation. Whether it is compliance to meet internal corporate procedures or external regulatory requirements, effective compliance will aid the organisation to avoid criminal charges, build a positive reputation, higher productivity and generate a positive working environment.
Workflow for Compliance
The overall purpose of a workflow is to divide business processes into smaller steps which can be passed to different people within (or outside) the organisation. This usually involves creating a document, submitting to a reviewer, pass back for amendments and so on. These steps may repeat several times before the reviewer is satisfied to move on to the next stage.
Workflow software can ensure that all necessary steps are undertaken, enforce control processes and verification of information. Tracking and monitoring of processes and approval checkpoints ensure that steps and information are not overlooked, missing or incorrect.
Quality Checks
Quality Checking involves reviewing all of the factors in the workflow. The purpose is to review for completeness and accuracy. It helps to identify and remove incorrect tasks early on; so that only the correct tasks are progressed and additional time is not wasted.
The reviewer will analyse the information to ensure that the details were completed correctly. The overall aim is to check that the provided information meets the set requirements.
Requests for information, send backs, and approvals with any comments or instructions can be communicated via alerts. The advantage is that each task can be immediately actioned when received and no time is wasted on follow ups.
Approvals
The Approver will inspect that all information is correct and complete before passing the information forward to the next process. Approvers can make decisions on whether to progress, request further information or reject altogether.
Workflow provides Approvers with the ability to request additional information, and approve or decline if it didn’t meet the requirements and provide reasons.
The Approver has the opportunity to evaluate the staff based on their experience and skills. From their analysis of the staff, they can then allocate the tasks to the most suitable individuals, which will ultimately increase the likelihood that the tasks will be carried out correctly.
Auditing
The audit log keeps record of all transactional events that occur within the system. An audit log can store all data entries including create, update and delete information. It can store the timestamps of the transaction along with the user who performed the transaction.
These can be permanently stored so that every transaction captured can be reviewed at any time by the administrator. The logs can be used to trace the proof of origin, changes, inserts or deletions and who, when and how they were actioned.
Workflow follows a consistent approach by requiring frequent approvals after important tasks and at major checkpoints. Workflow can guarantee that new employees follow the procedure and don’t make costly mistakes.
It also ensures that employees cannot cut corners, provide false or inaccurate information, or bypass procedures in the workflow.
All Things Workflow 