I watched a webinar earlier this week about BPM and compliance, a topic that I’ve been working on for a while, in which Global 360 announced their Active Compliance Framework (today’s Computer Business Review also reviewed their announcement). The speakers were from Doculabs and BWise, the latter of which has just partnered with Global 360 (and a bunch of other ECM/BPM vendors) for a compliance offering. Global 360 states the advantages of their compliance framework as follows:
Improved Compliance & Risk Management (i.e., do a better job of being compliant)
- Standardized, structured approach
- Focused on highest risk controls & processes
- Centralized visibility and control
Reduced Compliance Costs (i.e., be compliant in a more cost-effective way)
- Reduced project costs via control reduction based on risk
- Reduced testing costs for remaining controls via automation
- Eliminated testing costs for continuously compliant processes
Process Optimization & Control (i.e., provide an opportunity to optimize your business processes)
- Optimize process performance while increasing control
- Proactive compliance issue visibility, notification
- Evolution from obligation to optimization
I liked the focus on the last of these sections, or what they called “from obligation to optimization”: changing the organization’s attitude from compliance being a chore that they’re forced to implement, to compliance being an opportunity to improve business processes through standardization and measurement.
If, like 1/3 of Doculabs’ current customers, compliance is one of your highest priorities for 2005, it’s worth your time to check out compliance solutions like this from ECM/BPM vendors. The whole compliance field is still chaotic; a Gartner report on compliance management software lists 26 vendors and clearly states that the compliance market is not mature:
A key finding of our research is that there is no comprehensive compliance management application. Whether buying from one or many vendors to get a solution, you will need significant services for implementation and integration.
Partnerships like the one between Global 360 and BWise start to address this problem, but there’s still a long way to go before we can even agree on what “compliance management software” is.