While organisations spend $2.4million annually on compliance and control processes, only 26 per cent of industry professionals actually believe existing processes are adding significant value – fintech unicorn FloQast has revealed in its latest study.
FloQast’s market research survey, ’Compliance and Controls: The State of the Industry‘, made in conjunction with the University of Georgia Consumer Analytics program, reveals that there is room for improvement within compliance and controls management environments.
The accounting workflow automation software provider surveyed 213 accounting and finance professionals from the United States and 157 from the United Kingdom, finding that reinvestment in compliance and controls programs may not only benefit and protect the company during challenging economic times but also improve employee work-life balance.
The vast majority of respondents (93 per cent) cited adherence to regulations, not a desire to add organisational value, as the motivation for their compliance efforts.
Only 37 per cent reported a current strategic initiative for compliance or controls management programs. Even then, most initiatives cited were general efforts to understand compliance and controls processes, rather than those focused on how to optimise compliance and controls management for greater organisational strategy or agility.
Supporting employees with new processes
Fifty-six per cent of participants also indicated that current compliance or controls processes were adding stress to the work rather than removing it. Meanwhile, only 37 per cent of professionals reported having sufficient headcount in place to manage compliance/financial controls processes. These stats reveal that significant work remains to optimise compliance processes – but this could have positive impacts on not only adherence to regulations but also on employee stress.
It also emerged from the survey that in most cases, organisations are not leveraging technology properly to drive organisational value. In fact, FloQast revealed that 70 per cent of all organisations would benefit from automating their compliance processes.
Mike Whitmire, co-founder and CEO of FloQast, discussed the company’s findings. Whitmire explained: “Accurate and agile compliance and controls management programs are essential for protecting companies and avoiding costly inefficiencies, especially during turbulent economic times.
“Our survey revealed most compliance and controls programs aren’t providing value to teams, but also found clear and actionable steps that companies should take to improve these processes, and that the risk of not taking these steps is simply too great.”
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