Compliance

What Is a Compliance Dashboard, and Why Do You Need One?

Staying on top of your organization’s compliance requirements and managing a web of changing standards, rules, regulations, and audits can be daunting. Fortunately, with the help of an organized compliance dashboard tailored to meet your unique needs, you can maintain visibility into required activities effectively and efficiently and simplify compliance tracking to get—and stay—ahead of deadlines.

In this blog post, we discuss what a compliance dashboard is and why it’s essential for any business that must adhere to various sets of obligations.

What Is a Compliance Dashboard?

A compliance dashboard is an organized collection of information that provides visibility into your organization’s compliance program. Organizations can tailor the dashboard to meet unique organizational needs, allowing them to monitor and track data related to their specific compliance requirements and keep track of the compliance activities necessary for adhering to regulations, standards, rules, and audits.

Why Is Having a Compliance Dashboard Important?

Most organizations must comply with various regulations, standards, and obligations, from tax filing to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). A compliance dashboard is beneficial because it provides visibility into all the relevant data related to the company’s compliance management system and allows for easier tracking of changes in regulations, standards, rules, and audits.

By taking advantage of a well-designed compliance dashboard, organizations can reduce their compliance risk and ensure they meet all requirements promptly. With a centralized place to store all relevant data, you’ll gain visibility into the compliance activities of your organization and have an organized way of monitoring and tracking all compliance-related tasks.

Key Components of a Compliance Dashboard

While a compliance dashboard provides visibility into all the relevant data related to your compliance activities, you must include certain key components to be effective.

• Incident and investigation tracking. Including incident and investigation tracking in a compliance dashboard helps ensure you can properly address any issues or violations of the regulations your company is subject to.
• Compliance communication. A compliance communications component in a compliance dashboard provides an organized way of disseminating important information and ensuring proper procedures are followed. Compliance communications can significantly reduce non-compliance risk by providing an easily accessible platform to communicate updates to regulations, standards, and rules to all relevant stakeholders.
• Training. Including training ensures that all employees are properly informed of the compliance activities associated with their job roles. By providing access to interactive and comprehensive materials, the dashboard can help employees become knowledgeable of these requirements and better understand what is expected from them to remain compliant.
• Conflicts of interest. Including conflicts of interest in a compliance dashboard helps ensure all stakeholders are aware of any conflicts of interest that could potentially influence them to act (or give the appearance of acting) against the company’s best interests.
• Third-party risk management. Including third-party risk management helps ensure that your vendors or suppliers are compliant and reputable.
• Policies and procedures. Having policies and procedures in your compliance dashboard helps the organization adhere to various regulations and standards.
• Internal controls. Including internal and financial controls in a compliance dashboard helps provide the necessary oversight and monitoring of their operations, ensuring you track financial transactions accurately and have the information you need to prepare complete and accurate financial reports.
• Governance. Including the board of directors, senior management, and compliance committees on the compliance dashboard helps ensure all stakeholders know of any changes and allows for better oversight of compliance activities.
• Reports and alerts. Your compliance dashboard should provide notifications when regulations or standards change, alerts of upcoming deadlines, and any other important information related to compliance.

By having a comprehensive view of all these components, you can ensure your company stays on top of its compliance requirements and meets all applicable regulations on time.

Benefits of Implementing a Compliance Dashboard

Implementing a compliant dashboard can provide numerous benefits for your organization. Here are some of the key advantages:

• Regulatory compliance. A comprehensive overview of all applicable regulations and how they are being monitored and tracked provides visibility into an organization’s compliance activities.
• Standards and rules. A clear view of the standards and rules associated with an organization’s compliance requirements, including local, state, and federal laws and industry standards.
• Audits and reviews. Easily track internal and external audits to identify potential weaknesses in your organization’s compliance activities.
• Real-time reports and alerts. Get notifications when regulations or standards change, alerts of upcoming deadlines, and other compliance issues.
• Documentation and training. Store and track all relevant documents and training materials related to your compliance activities so that everyone is informed about changes or new regulations.
• Reduced time and resources required for compliance tracking. By having a centralized place to store data related to your business’s specific needs, you’ll be able to streamline the process of staying on top of deadlines more efficiently and benchmark your progress against other organizations.
• Improved visibility into compliance activities. With a one-stop shop for monitoring compliance and troubleshooting issues, you have better control over any areas that require improvement and can avoid potential penalties and sanctions.

7 Steps to Implement a Compliance Dashboard in Your Business

A well-designed dashboard can simplify your compliance initiatives and ensure your organization meets all requirements in a timely manner. However, building a compliant dashboard isn’t always easy. To help you get started, here are seven steps to implement a compliance dashboard in your business.

1. Establish the need for compliance tracking. The first step to implementing a compliance dashboard is to identify and evaluate your specific needs. This often includes outlining details such as regulations, standards, audit requirements, and other pertinent information that needs to be adhered to.
2. Identify relevant compliance data sources. Determine where you’ll get all relevant data related to their specific requirements. You may have key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, and data scattered throughout a data warehouse, several applications, human resources, information technology, and spreadsheets that will need to be integrated into the dashboard design.
3. Design the compliance dashboard. You can begin designing your compliance dashboard after identifying your needs and the necessary data. This includes selecting the features and functions you will include, the layout of the dashboard itself, and determining permissions for accessing the information.
4. Set up automated notifications. When you automate alerts or notifications for deadlines, triggers, and other important information related to compliance, you can stay on top of compliance activities without needing to log into the dashboard each day.
5. Monitor compliance activities. After setting up the dashboard, monitor the compliance activities regularly to ensure all regulations and standards are being adhered to, review any changes in policies or procedures, and track the progress of any audits or reviews.
6. Make necessary changes and improvements. It’s crucial to regularly update your dashboard with new information as it becomes available. Deletion of information that’s no longer helpful can also ensure your dashboard doesn’t get too bloated and lose relevancy.

If you need help implementing a compliance dashboard, download our SOX Compliance Checklist template and check out FloQast Compliance Management. We can help you reduce financial compliance complexity by streamlining financial controls together with the Close so your organization can get started on the right foot.

Stefan van Duyvendijk

Stefan van Duyvendijk is the Accounting Operations Evangelist at FloQast. Previously, Stefan served as the Corporate Controller for Kodiak Cakes, a private equity owned, leading consumer packaged food company, and as a Controller for Skullcandy, a multinational headphone CPG. These positions followed his five years at KPMG. His experience includes ASC 606 implementation, reduction of financial close timelines, accounting operational improvements, business combinations, financial statement audits, SOX audits and implementation, management reporting, debt, treasury, and systems integrations/implementation.