SC&RA COMMENT: Compliance tools in a post-crisis period

As companies in the transportation and construction industries navigate the post-Covid landscape, it’s incumbent on leaders to assure employees, customers and everyone in between that decisions are being made with both long- and short-term stability in mind.

Trust plays a major role in the new road ahead, but before any organization decides to effectively plug back in to a post-crisis marketplace, leaders within need to solidify that trust by implementing their decisions to the letter of the law.

Especially now, compliance can be a way for your company to build trust and drive efficiency. Too many business owners interpret compliance as an operational practice designed around meeting minimum legal requirements – a “cost of doing business” – but it can actually serve as a distinguisher, comprised of strategic value, for companies that embrace it.

Within a post-crisis period, business leaders should be looking to maximize all logical pathways to success, and in this regard, compliance can undoubtedly serve as both a competitive and cost advantage – which can ultimately attract and maintain customers, create value for stakeholders and instill confidence in regulators.

Long-term bond

Compliance budgets are increasing all the time, and related staff are also evolving. To that end, modern companies within the industry space are finding themselves juggling increasingly diverse demands via regulatory bodies. In turn, those costs are spreading themselves throughout a company in more complex ways, whether its customer-facing, back-office, executive or IT. More people are handling compliance responsibilities throughout companies – which adds to the risk of compliance failures.

All the more reason to put measures in place assuring that staff, customers and stakeholders across the entire value chain are aware of and engaged in the purpose of a particular compliance activity.

Successful leaders understand the value of knowing how compliance decisions will affect customers and shape the overall relationship and related expectations. Staying competitive is one thing, but maintaining healthy relationships and securing return-work is often more connected to the compliance process than many business owners realize. Customers want to know that they’re getting quality products and/or service at a fair price, but the confidence that comes with knowing they don’t have to stress about compliance can genuinely shape ROI and further galvanize a long-term bond.

Built for success

These days, compliance processes have become heavily influenced by and often enhanced with tech. Not only can tech improve cost-effectiveness through analytics and increased reliability through the use of both internal and external data sets, but companies are finding additional efficiencies in the areas of natural language recognition, next-gen governance and risk.

Tax obligations and compliance filings, in particular – often manual processes – can be streamlined and integrated into automated, standardized processes that result in more reliable data, time savings, risk reduction and more accurate filings.

While you’re looking to utilize these compliance tools and strategies to solidify your relationships and enrich your processes, there’s a predictive element too. You’d only be realizing a portion of the benefit if you didn’t also use these compliance strategies to gain insight – whether it’s to prevent future failures or get out in front of opportunity.

Plenty of organizations today are utilizing regulatory horizon-scanning tools and leveraging third-party databases that track regulations and proposed changes – which can provide advance notice of new compliance requirements and give you a competitive advantage when recognizing where pressures and risks may be increasing.

Implementing compliance tools and strategies allows you to drive down costs and increase effectiveness. You’ll build trust with current customers and regulatory bodies alike – while decreasing risk and cultivating opportunity through a system built for success.