Quality management essential in quest for regulatory compliance

With the increased focus on regulatory compliance becoming an area for concern in SA, IT managers are struggling to find ways to meet requirements within the larger context of their overall IT goals.

Many organisations are now attempting to address industry-driven compliance requirements by adopting more stringent quality assurance standards in a bid to avoid some of the risks that non-compliance can create.

Organisations are quickly realising that merely meeting regulatory compliance mandates to avoid penalties is not enough. Rather, incorporating compliance requirements into business strategies and finding ways to leverage the efforts of compliance for business gains makes a lot more sense - if it can be done in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

But if the IT department simply responds separately to each compliance requirement, it will find itself wasting resources and time and ultimately not achieving the more strategic business goals associated with compliance.

Creating an enterprise risk and compliance management programme is a sensible approach to meeting business goals and regulatory mandates, while efficiently incorporating compliance into existing quality management programmes.

At the same time, compliance management can provide IT departments with a measurable return on investment (ROI), as part of a greater quality assurance programme.

By instilling a consistent quality management process, the costs of needless cycles are reduced when ensuring that an application is complying. It also reduces or eliminates costly failures that result from ineffective compliance and risk management efforts.

Not surprisingly, many leading organisations have launched efforts in recent years to improve the quality of their applications. Now the same organisations that are leading the way in quality assurance and management are discovering the added benefits of applying their quality programmes to the regulatory compliance challenge.

Organisations are finding that by implementing a process or methodology for compliance management along with identifying and tracking the right metrics to ensure compliance, they are gaining more reliable applications and significant process improvements.

But like quality management, compliance management requires an ongoing effort that is focused on establishing processes and improving them to deliver solid, complying applications to the business.

The long-term benefits of compliance management are real and measurable; the faster an organisation adopts a process-based approach to compliance management, the sooner it can meet impending compliance requirements, and establish itself as a leader in its industry.