Why compliance deserves more love than it gets

via Flickr - DaPuglet (Tina)

Let’s be honest: not every department can be sales — the team that gets all the glory, the high-fives, and the rewards. Some departments, like compliance, often get stuck playing the role of the office buzzkill. Policies? “Blah, blah, blah.” Procedures? “Ugh, who follows those?” It’s no surprise compliance rarely tops the office popularity contest.

But here’s the twist: a strong compliance program isn’t just about checking boxes or enforcing “stupid” rules. Done right, it quietly improves business performance, minimizes risk, and helps prevent costly surprises. Let’s break it down.

The Three Pillars of Compliance

A great compliance program boils down to three essential steps:

1. Create policies and procedures.

2. Verify adherence.

3. Record and address failures.

When you look at it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Step 1: Create Policies and Procedures That Matter

Writing policies takes effort — but the focus should always be on value. Create policies designed to protect your clients, your data, and your business. For example:

• A policy for securing client data.

• A procedure for delivering accurate investor reports on time, every time.

If a policy doesn’t add measurable value or protect the business, it’s either unnecessary or needs rewriting.

Step 2: Test, Don’t Guess

Having policies isn’t enough. You have to ensure people actually follow them. You can wait for disaster to strike and learn the hard way, or you can proactively test your processes.

Regular testing:

• Identifies weak points (whether in the process or the people).

• Prevents small issues from snowballing into business threats.

• Gives you time to fix things before they hurt your bottom line.

And testing shouldn’t just be a promise to “review reports” once a week. Build a compliance workflow that automates the gathering, organizing, and assignment of tasks to the right people. Use verification steps to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. Bonus points if you leverage AI to highlight potential non-compliance and security risks, especially when you’re managing mountains of data.

Step 3: Record and Resolve Issues

Here’s the part many businesses overlook: following up.

When non-compliance is spotted but not addressed:

• The issue festers until it blows up, potentially losing you clients or landing you on a regulator’s radar.

• The underlying problem remains unsolved, guaranteeing future headaches.

Tracking and resolving failures is what turns compliance from a nuisance into a business asset.

This is where the magic happens: continuous process improvement.

The Bottom Line

Compliance might not win "Most Popular" in your office, but it can quietly become one of the most valuable functions in your business. Done right, it shields you from risk, tightens operations, and improves outcomes across the board.

Skip it, and sooner or later, you’ll pay for it.

Embrace it, and you’ll wonder why it was ever so unpopular in the first place.

imkore Millennia Group and its imkore partners provide workflow (including compliance workflows), document management services and solutions, IT strategy, data fabric and ERP managed services.