In an era of constant regulatory change, many compliance teams still rely on Excel spreadsheets and other manual tools to track new rules and updates. On the surface, spreadsheets seem convenient – after all, Excel has been the de facto “gold standard” for business data since 1985. Yet beneath that familiarity lies a hidden compliance liability. What worked as a quick fix in the past is now a source of risk in modern regulatory environments. Compliance professionals at financial institutions and insurance companies know the struggle: version upon version of a regulatory change tracker, endless email threads, and that sinking feeling that something important might slip through the cracks. This post takes a deep dive into those pain points – and explores why moving from manual to managed (using a centralized platform) is not just a tech upgrade, but a necessary compliance strategy.
Excel: A Hidden Compliance Liability
Excel-based regulatory change trackers often start as a helpful workaround – a way to log new regulatory requirements, assign owners, and monitor status. Over time, however, these manual tools tend to sprawl and falter, creating unanticipated risks for the organization. The very features that make Excel appealing (flexibility, ease of use) also make it error-prone and unreliable for critical compliance processes.
Imagine a compliance officer updating a spreadsheet every time a regulator issues new guidance. At first it’s manageable. But as the regulatory updates pile up – sometimes hundreds per year or more – the spreadsheet grows complex, with multiple tabs, filters, and footnotes. Different departments may keep their own copies. Before long, the “simple” solution turns into a labyrinth of data where errors and omissions hide in plain sight. Studies have found that 88% of spreadsheets contain errors, and numerous high-profile financial mishaps (from the “London Whale” trading loss to billion-dollar reporting errors) have been traced back to spreadsheet mistakes. In compliance, a single error or missed update in your tracker can lead to missed obligations, improper policies, or even regulatory breaches.
Equally concerning, Excel was never designed as a collaborative or auditable system for tracking change. There’s no built-in robust version control, no automatic log of who changed what and when, and no easy way to link related items. As we’ll explore next, these limitations manifest as tangible pain points: from version control nightmares and audit trail gaps to wasted resources, slow responses, and cross-department miscommunication.
Real-World Pain Points of Manual Tracking
Manual regulatory change trackers (whether in Excel, SharePoint lists, or email chains) come with a host of headaches that can put an institution at compliance risk. Let’s look at some real-world pain points that compliance teams frequently encounter:
Version Control Nightmares
One of the first issues teams hit with Excel trackers is version control – or rather, the lack thereof. Spreadsheets multiply like rabbits: “RegChangeTracker_v1.xlsx” spawns v1.1, v2_final, v2_finalFINAL, and so on, as multiple stakeholders make copies and edits. It becomes nearly impossible to tell which file is the true “single source of truth.” Compliance staff may waste hours just figuring out if they’re looking at the latest information. This “version proliferation” isn’t just inconvenient; it’s dangerous. If an outdated file is mistakenly used to drive a compliance decision, critical regulatory changes could be missed.
Excel simply isn’t built for multi-user version control. As one industry expert put it, Excel was created in an era of “one user = one sheet,” and even with cloud sharing, keeping track of edits by multiple users is extremely difficult. Different departments might maintain separate tracker sheets for the same regulations, leading to inconsistent data. Without a centralized update log, you have no reliable way to see historical changes or to roll back to a previous state. In contrast, a dedicated system would maintain an audit-friendly history of changes, but with a manual spreadsheet, proving who updated what (and when) can be a nightmare.
The outcome? Teams end up storing myriads of duplicate files, trying to manually reconcile them. It’s not only inefficient but also raises the risk of data loss or omission. If someone accidentally deletes a row or saves over the master copy, there’s often no easy recovery. As Cygnetise noted in a 2022 survey, organizations using Excel for compliance wind up with “a myriad of documents… duplicate efforts, time wasted on figuring out the latest version, and a high risk of loss of data”. Clearly, the version control issue alone is a strong signal that relying on spreadsheets for regulatory tracking is a risky proposition.
Audit Trail Gaps and Accountability
Regulators today expect robust audit trails for compliance activities. If your institution undergoes an examination, you may be asked to demonstrate how you tracked a particular regulatory change, what decisions were made, and when actions were taken. Here is where Excel falls woefully short. Excel doesn’t provide a clear or automatic trail of updates – there’s no field in a spreadsheet that tells you that Jane updated cell B5 with new rule text on March 3rd, 2025 at 2:45 PM. At best, you might have a last-modified timestamp on the file, but that won’t tell you what changed inside. To maintain an audit trail in Excel, users have to devise clunky workarounds (like color-coding recent changes, adding manual log sheets, or saving dozens of timestamped file versions). It’s easy to see how things can go wrong.
In fact, keeping comprehensive audit records in Excel is so cumbersome that many details simply aren’t recorded at all. Did the team complete an impact assessment for Regulation XYZ? You hope so – but if it’s not documented in a reliable system, you might scramble to find evidence when auditors ask. According to compliance experts, “with regulators demanding complete audit trails and transparency, Excel is certainly not capable to meet this requirement.” The lack of an audit trail isn’t just a theoretical problem; it directly affects accountability. Team members can edit or overwrite entries in a tracker without leaving any trace of their rationale or the previous state. Months later, trying to reconstruct why a certain decision was made (or whether a particular update was evaluated) becomes guesswork.
This gap in accountability can put compliance officers in a precarious position. They may know their team is working hard to track obligations, but they can’t prove it easily. And in compliance, if you didn’t document it, effectively you didn’t do it. An auditor or regulator might not be satisfied with “we have it in a spreadsheet” if you can’t produce a reliable history of compliance actions. Ultimately, the absence of an audit trail in manual trackers undermines confidence – both internally (for management oversight) and externally (for regulatory examinations).
Slow Responses and Wasted Resources
Another major pitfall of manual change trackers is the inefficiency they breed. When you rely on people to manually monitor regulatory websites, update spreadsheets, email stakeholders, and follow up, a huge amount of human time gets consumed by low-value tasks. Compliance teams often act as human switchboards, copying and pasting info from regulatory notices into Excel, then copying from Excel into emails or reports. Not only is this process slow, it’s also highly error-prone and inconsistent. Every manual step is a point of potential failure or delay.
Consider what happens when a new regulatory update is published. In a manual process, someone first needs to discover the update – perhaps by checking a regulator’s website or receiving an email alert. Then they must interpret it, log it into the spreadsheet tracker, determine who in the organization needs to know, and send out notifications (often via email or meetings). Those responsible then might update their own records or simply reply back. The compliance officer updates the spreadsheet status accordingly. With luck, this all happens quickly. But quite often, especially in large organizations, this dance takes days or weeks. Multiply that by dozens of updates each month, and it’s easy to see how firms can fall behind. A manual tracker doesn’t proactively alert you; it just sits there waiting for someone to feed it. If your team is busy or understaffed, responses to important regulatory changes can be delayed — or missed entirely.
The resource waste in this approach is significant. Talented compliance professionals end up spending hours on clerical updating work. It’s estimated that over a third of a compliance officer’s time is spent just tracking and analyzing regulatory changes, reporting on them, and updating policies. When much of that is done through Excel and email, it’s a poor use of skilled staff and an expensive way to operate. In fact, labor-intensive manual processes add hidden costs that organizations often overlook. As one analysis pointed out, using spreadsheets means “no auto reminders, audit trails or automated reports” – everything requires human effort – and “the whole process is labor intensive and prone to errors”.
All this manual effort also slows down response time. If regulators issue a critical update (say, an emergency guidance or a new rule with a tight deadline), a firm relying on periodic spreadsheet checks might be a step behind. By the time the change is logged and communicated, the clock has ticked further. In contrast, an automated system could notify relevant people in real-time. In today’s fast-paced regulatory climate, a delayed response isn’t just inefficient; it’s a compliance risk. Missing an implementation deadline or failing to promptly assess a regulatory change can lead to fines or enforcement actions. The bottom line: manual trackers consume lots of resources and still leave you reacting slower than you should.
Siloed Efforts and Miscommunication
Compliance is a team sport, often involving multiple departments – legal, risk management, business units, operations, and more. Effective regulatory change management requires cross-department coordination: everyone needs to be on the same page about new requirements and who is handling what. Excel trackers, unfortunately, tend to foster silos and miscommunication rather than alignment.
Why? First, a spreadsheet usually lives with one team (e.g., the central compliance team). Others access it indirectly, if at all. Often, updates are communicated by emailing the Excel file around or pasting its contents into message threads. This “Excel round robin” was humorously described by one expert: a sheet gets emailed to various people for input, each maybe appending their own version number to the file name. It’s easy to imagine the confusion this causes across departments. One manager is looking at “RegTracker_v5” not realizing the compliance analyst already has “v7” in progress. Important feedback or decisions might get lost in someone’s inbox. In meetings, people might refer to different versions of reality.
Furthermore, because Excel isn’t a multi-user database, simultaneous collaboration is limited. If two departments need to log their impact assessments for a new rule, one might unwittingly overwrite the other’s info or have to wait until they receive an updated file. There is no seamless way for multiple contributors to work in tandem and see each other’s inputs in real-time. This leads to miscommunication like, “I thought you were updating that section?” – “No, I updated my local copy, didn’t you see it?” – “Oops, we merged them incorrectly.” Such scenarios are all too common.
The silo effect is exacerbated when each department starts keeping its own tracking mechanisms. For example, the legal team might have a list of upcoming laws, the IT risk team tracks tech-related regs in another sheet, and business units each maintain compliance checklists. Without integration, there’s no holistic view. Critical information remains fragmented. One study noted that in risk and compliance, “everything is connected… multiply that across all your locations and divisions, and spreadsheets just aren’t up to the task. They can’t effectively integrate all that information,” leading to limited transparency and no enterprise-wide view of compliance status. In short, manual tools encourage a fragmented approach – the opposite of the coordination you need for enterprise compliance.
Miscommunication also extends to management and auditors. If leadership asks, “Are we up to date on all applicable regulatory changes?” the answer may require consolidating inputs from several files and teams. That introduces yet another chance for something to be missed or misunderstood. In an audit or regulatory exam, if different staff give slightly different answers because their spreadsheets aren’t synchronized, it does not inspire confidence. These communication gaps can erode trust internally and make demonstrating compliance externally far more difficult.
All of these pain points – version confusion, lack of audit trail, slow manual work, and siloed communication – highlight a core truth: Excel and other manual tools are showing their limits in the face of modern compliance demands. What’s the alternative? The answer is to shift from manual to managed: to adopt a centralized platform for regulatory change and policy management. Such platforms are purpose-built to eliminate the above frustrations. In the next sections, we’ll explore how moving to a managed system can streamline workflows, reduce risk, and improve your team’s ability to keep up with constant change.
From Manual to Managed: The Case for a Centralized Platform
Given the drawbacks of Excel-based trackers, an increasing number of organizations are turning to dedicated Regulatory Change Management (RCM) platforms – often as part of a broader Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) solution. Unlike a static spreadsheet, a centralized RCM platform is a living system that actively helps you manage the flow of regulatory changes. Let’s break down how a managed solution addresses the pain points we discussed:
- Single Source of Truth: A centralized platform provides one authoritative repository for all regulatory changes and compliance actions. Instead of juggling multiple Excel files, the whole team (and all departments) access the same up-to-date information. This eliminates version control problems by design – everyone works off the latest data in the system. Historical changes aren’t lost; they’re stored as part of the record. In technical terms, the platform serves as the golden record, ensuring data consistency across the organization.
- Built-In Audit Trails: Modern compliance systems automatically log every action: when a new regulation is entered (or auto-imported), who performed an impact assessment, when a task was completed, and so on. You can easily see who did what and when – no hoping someone remembered to note it in Excel. This means when audit time comes, generating evidence of compliance work is straightforward. Every regulatory change event in the system can have attached documentation, comments, approvals, and timestamps. Regulators and internal auditors love this, because it demonstrates control and accountability. In essence, the system creates an audit-ready trail by default, closing the accountability gap that spreadsheets leave open.
- Workflow Automation and Alerts: A key advantage of moving to a managed tool is automation. The platform can integrate with regulatory feeds or content libraries to receive real-time updates on rule changes. For example, if a regulator issues a new rule or guidance, the system can automatically create a record, populate initial details, and even alert the relevant compliance officers with a notification. No more manually monitoring dozens of websites – the information comes to you, promptly. Additionally, once a change is logged, workflow automation kicks in: the platform can trigger tasks or reminders for designated owners to assess the change, update controls or policies, and mark off when complete. This ensures timely responses. Instead of living in email inboxes, assignments and deadlines are tracked within the system, often with dashboard visibility. Managers can see at a glance if a regulatory change is still “in review” or “pending action” and poke the team if needed – something nearly impossible to do with scattered spreadsheets.
- Efficiency and Resource Focus: By automating routine tracking and providing structured workflows, a centralized solution frees up your compliance team’s time. The hours spent fiddling with Excel formulas, copy-pasting updates, or chasing colleagues for status can be drastically reduced. One outcome is that compliance professionals can redirect their effort from administrative upkeep to higher-value activities, like risk analysis and advisory work. Also, fewer mistakes happen when the process is guided by software – the platform won’t forget to alert you about a change, and it won’t transpose a cell by accident. Many organizations find that what used to require several full-time staff to manage via spreadsheets can be handled more smoothly with a leaner team using a good system (or the same team can handle a much larger volume of changes). In a world of tightening budgets, that efficiency is gold. It’s no surprise that firms are realizing “increasing employee productivity by using efficient software solutions can significantly impact the bottom line” in compliance operations.
- Enhanced Collaboration: A centralized platform breaks down silos by design. All stakeholders – compliance, legal, risk, business unit reps – log into the same system, each with appropriate access rights. They can comment, upload documents, and complete their assigned tasks in one place. No more emailing spreadsheets around; everyone sees updates in real time. This kind of tool often includes role-based access (so, for example, a business unit owner can view and update items relevant to their unit, but maybe not others). It may also allow multiple users to work in parallel on different parts of a change record without overwriting each other. The result is better cross-department communication: the legal team can check the status of a regulatory change and see that the compliance team has already tagged it as high priority and assigned the operations team to implement changes, including notes about next steps. When all parties share a platform, there’s far less “did anyone tell so-and-so about this new rule?” – the information radiates out to the right people automatically. This transparency and shared access dramatically reduce miscommunication.
- Centralized Dashboard and Reporting: Another benefit of a managed solution is the ability to get big-picture insights instantly. Dashboards can show how many regulatory changes came in this quarter, how many were assessed, how many policies were updated as a result, which items are overdue, etc. You can slice data by status, region, risk level, department, and more. This is invaluable for management reporting and board updates. It’s also a lifesaver during audits or exams – instead of digging through spreadsheets, you can generate on-demand reports that demonstrate compliance status and history. Remember the “examination headaches” we mentioned earlier? With a centralized system, those ease considerably: you can often give auditors read-only access to certain records or produce an audit package with all the evidence they need. One risk expert noted that lengthy examinations (when using spreadsheets) are costly because staff get pulled to gather info, and “good luck explaining your system” of Excel to examiners. In contrast, a proper RCM platform is built to be auditable and explainable, reducing that pain.
In summary, a centralized regulatory change management platform directly addresses the hidden liabilities of Excel. It brings speed, control, and visibility to a process that, when done manually, is slow, error-prone, and opaque. By moving to a managed approach, organizations can respond faster to regulatory updates, ensure nothing falls through the cracks, and have confidence that they can demonstrate compliance to regulators at any time.
However, not all solutions are equal. The most forward-thinking firms aren’t just centralizing regulatory change tracking; they are also tightly integrating it with internal policy management. This combination is the next piece of the puzzle – and it’s where a platform like Connected Risk shines as a winning compliance strategy.
Connected Risk: Uniting Regulatory Change and Policy Management
Investing in a centralized platform is a big step up from Excel, but the real game-changer comes when you connect external regulatory change management with internal policy management. Why is this integration so important? Because regulatory requirements mean little unless they’re reflected in your company’s policies and procedures. If your regulatory change process is siloed from your policy updates, you could identify a new rule but fail to update an operational policy in response – effectively creating a compliance gap. By uniting these functions, you ensure that *“what’s on paper” (laws and regulations) directly informs *“what’s in practice” (your internal policies and controls).
Connected Risk is an approach (and platform) that does exactly this: it bridges regulatory change management and policy management into one cohesive system. In practical terms, this means when a new regulatory change is logged, the platform can instantly show which existing policies, procedures, or controls relate to that regulation. Compliance teams can map obligations to internal documents. For example, if a new data privacy regulation is introduced, the system will identify which internal privacy policy or data handling procedure might need updating. This avoids the classic problem of “we knew about the law change, but our handbook didn’t get updated until much later.” With Connected Risk, those dots are connected by design.
The synergy of combining these functions yields several benefits:
- End-to-End Visibility: You can trace a line from a regulatory requirement all the way to the implemented company policy and even down to control execution. This end-to-end view means no blind spots – you know exactly how each regulation is being addressed internally. It also means if a policy is out-of-date, you can quickly see if it’s because a new reg came in that someone missed. Essentially, it closes the loop between external change and internal response.
- Streamlined Policy Updates: In a Connected Risk platform, once you determine that a regulatory change requires a policy modification, you can initiate and track that policy change within the same system. Modern platforms include full policy management modules, offering features like policy library management, version control for policy documents, workflow for drafting and approval, and even attestation tracking (making sure employees read and attest to new policies). By having this in one platform, the hand-off from “reg change team” to “policy owners” is seamless. Everyone works in the same environment, and the regulatory change record can be linked to the policy record. This ensures that when regulators ask “how did you implement this new rule internally?”, you can show the exact policy that was updated (and when, and by whom, with a full approval history).
- Greater Accountability and Less Overlap: Many organizations have separate teams for regulatory compliance and for policy administration. If they operate in different systems or silos, there’s a risk of things falling between the cracks (or conversely, being double-handled). Integrating the two functions enforces collaboration. The moment a new reg is identified, policy managers are in the loop. Conversely, if a policy exception or issue is noted, it can trigger a review to see if it ties back to a regulatory requirement. One platform means one workflow, where each role knows their part. This joined-up approach is a winning strategy because it mirrors the reality that compliance obligations and internal governance are two sides of the same coin.
- Connected Data for Insights: When regulatory change data and policy data live together, you can derive powerful insights. For instance, you might analyze which regulations cause the most policy changes or which business units are most affected by regulatory updates. The Connected Risk platform “draws upon data using advanced modeling and mapping, facilitating a greater degree of standardization” across risk and compliance functions. All that means better analytics. You can identify trends, such as areas of the business under stress from frequent regulatory shifts, and pre-emptively bolster controls there. It’s much harder to get this intelligence when your data is scattered in ad-hoc files.
- Improved Audit Readiness and Confidence: Regulators increasingly expect firms to not only track rules but also promptly adjust their internal policies. If you can demonstrate an integrated process – “Here’s the rule change, and right here is the updated policy we put in place as a result, all logged in our system” – you showcase a mature compliance program. It provides confidence that your organization is not just aware of changes but actually doing something about them in a controlled manner. A connected platform can produce evidence of this linkage on demand. For example, a Connected Risk system could generate a report of all regulatory changes in the past year and which internal policies or procedures were created or modified in response. That level of preparedness is nearly impossible to achieve with disconnected spreadsheets and documents.
Connected Risk isn’t a hypothetical concept; solutions offering this integrated approach are available and have been recognized as cutting-edge in the GRC space. They leverage the idea of “one platform, many linked risks” – you get infinite linkage capabilities between different risk and compliance data points. By increasing data quality and breaking down silos, such platforms help compliance teams shift from reactive, fragmented efforts to proactive, holistic risk management.
In essence, combining Regulatory Change Management with Policy Management under one roof means your compliance strategy becomes truly connected: external obligations feed internal controls automatically, and internal control gaps prompt a check against external obligations. It’s a continuous loop that significantly reduces compliance risk.
Why Connected Risk Is the Better Solution: Features & Benefits
To recap, moving from manual trackers to a platform like Connected Risk offers a transformative upgrade for compliance teams. Let’s highlight some key features of a Connected Risk approach and the tangible benefits they deliver, especially compared to the old Excel-based way:
- Real-Time Regulatory Intelligence – Feature: Connected Risk platforms integrate with regulatory news feeds and databases, providing real-time alerts when relevant laws or regulations change. Benefit: Compliance teams no longer have to manually monitor every regulator’s website; the important updates come to them instantly. This ensures no critical update is missed and allows the organization to respond faster, well before compliance deadlines hit.
- Single Source of Truth – Feature: All regulatory change data and compliance activities reside in one centralized repository. There’s one master record for each regulatory development. Benefit: This eliminates the confusion of multiple spreadsheet versions. Everyone from front-line compliance analysts to the Chief Compliance Officer works off the same up-to-date information, improving consistency. Decisions are made based on a common view of reality, greatly reducing miscommunication and error.
- Automated Workflow & Reminders – Feature: The system automatically assigns tasks (with deadlines) to responsible individuals when a regulatory change is logged – for example, “Complete impact assessment for Rule X” or “Update Policy Y to align with new requirements.” It also sends reminders and escalations if tasks are overdue. Benefit: No more relying on memory or manual follow-ups. The platform drives the process forward, ensuring timely completion of each step. This proactive workflow means the organization stays ahead of regulatory changes, rather than scrambling at the last minute.
- Full Audit Trail and Reporting – Feature: Every action in the platform – additions, edits, approvals, comments – is time-stamped and recorded in an immutable audit log. Robust reporting tools allow extraction of this information in various formats. Benefit: Come audit or examination time, you have built-in evidence of your compliance process. You can show regulators exactly what happened for each regulatory change: when it was logged, who approved the impact assessment, what policy was updated, etc., all with a few clicks. This greatly improves audit readiness and gives management peace of mind that compliance activities are documented and defensible.
- Integrated Policy Management – Feature: Connected Risk combines regulatory change management with a full policy management module. This includes a searchable policy library, version-controlled policy documents, and workflows for drafting, reviewing, approving, and publishing policies. You can link regulatory requirements to specific policies and even manage policy attestations and exceptions in the same system. Benefit: The moment a regulation changes, you can immediately assess which internal policies need revision and launch that update process. Everything stays synchronized. Policies remain continuously aligned with current regulations, and employees always have access to the latest guidance. This reduces the risk of outdated or non-compliant internal procedures and saves time by managing the whole lifecycle in one place.
- Enhanced Collaboration & Permissions – Feature: The platform supports multiple user roles and fine-grained permissions (e.g., read-only, edit, approve). It allows many users to work concurrently on different aspects of compliance. There are communication features like commenting or activity logs for each item. Benefit: Cross-functional teams can truly collaborate without stepping on each other’s toes. For instance, compliance can document regulatory interpretation notes, the legal department can add analysis, and business unit managers can record their implementation plans – all under the same change record. Permissions ensure that each person can access what they need and nothing more, preventing unauthorized changes. In short, everyone sees what they need to see, and updates are transparent to all stakeholders, reducing the email ping-pong and confusion we see with spreadsheets.
- Analytics and Holistic Risk View – Feature: Connected Risk platforms often include dashboards and analytics that aggregate data across compliance and risk areas. They might show trends (like volume of regulatory changes over time, or compliance status by business unit) and can often integrate other risk metrics (incidents, controls, audits) for a big-picture view. Benefit: This moves compliance from a reactive stance to a strategic one. You gain insights into your compliance program – for example, identifying which regulations drive most of your workload, or spotting gaps where regulatory changes are not linked to any policy (potential oversight!). It enables better decision-making at the management and board level, as they can see risk and compliance information synthesized together. Compared to a manual approach where data is fragmented, this is a revolutionary improvement in understanding and managing risk.
- Scalability and Consistency – Feature: A centralized solution is scalable and configurable. As regulations evolve or the business expands into new areas, you can adjust taxonomies, add new modules or data feeds, and onboard new users without losing consistency. The system enforces standard formats for data and processes. Benefit: No matter how much the regulatory environment or your organization changes, the compliance process remains consistent and controlled. You’re not reinventing your tracking method every time; the platform grows with you. This also ensures that if key compliance personnel leave, the knowledge doesn’t leave with them – it’s captured in the system. That continuity is something a patchwork of spreadsheets can’t provide (indeed, if the owner of a manual tracker leaves, it can be a serious operational risk).
With all these advantages, it’s clear why a Connected Risk approach is superior to the manual status quo. It directly tackles the pain points that plague compliance teams and turns them into strengths:
- Version control issues? Solved with one source of truth and real-time multi-user access.
- Audit trail gaps? Filled with automatic logging of every action.
- Resource waste and delays? Reduced through automation and faster information flow.
- Cross-department miscommunication? Minimized by shared platforms and transparent workflows.
- Keeping policies in sync with regulations? Ensured by integrated management of both.
In short, Connected Risk means compliance changes are managed, not just documented. It’s a proactive stance: instead of reacting to problems caused by your tool (Excel), your tool actually helps you prevent problems.
Moving Forward: Embrace the Change from Excel to Connected Risk
For compliance professionals who have long struggled with the limitations of Excel-based trackers, the prospect of a centralized, connected solution is as refreshing as it is necessary. The regulatory landscape isn’t going to get any easier – in fact, it grows more complex each year, with an estimated 200+ regulatory changes occurring daily on average worldwide. Keeping up with that pace using manual methods is like trying to catch a flood with a bucket. It’s time to upgrade to a pipeline.
Connected Risk offers that pipeline: a managed system that channels the deluge of regulatory changes into an organized, actionable flow. By combining regulatory change management and policy management, it ensures your organization not only knows about new rules but also implements the right responses in policy and practice. The frustrations of version chaos, missing audit trails, and scattered communications can give way to a more confident, controlled process. Imagine being able to tell your board or a regulator, “Yes, we track every applicable regulatory change in a centralized system. For each one, we assess impact, update our policies, and can show you the evidence of each step.” That level of assurance is priceless for a compliance function.
From a practical perspective, moving to a platform like Connected Risk doesn’t happen overnight. It requires planning, data migration, and training. But the journey from manual to managed is well worth it. Many institutions start by identifying their most critical regulatory areas or biggest spreadsheet pain points and piloting the new system there. Early wins – like catching a regulatory update that would have been missed, or shaving weeks off a policy update cycle – help build momentum. Users quickly appreciate the intuitive workflows and the reduction in email clutter. Senior management appreciates the improved reporting and risk oversight. In fact, what often happens is that once compliance demonstrates success, other GRC areas (like operational risk or internal audit) also want to plug into the “connected” approach, further breaking down silos.
The call to action is clear: It’s time to retire the manual Excel trackers that have quietly been increasing your compliance risk. Embrace a Connected Risk platform that is built for the challenges you face today. The cost of maintaining the status quo – in inefficiencies, in risks of error, in potential regulatory fallout – far outweighs the effort to modernize. By moving from manual to managed, you empower your compliance team to focus on what truly matters: interpreting the regulations, advising the business, and steering your organization safely through a sea of change.
Don’t let Excel become your undoing. Transform it from a hidden liability into an opportunity – an opportunity to modernize and fortify your compliance program. From manual to managed is more than a catchy phrase; it’s the new standard for compliance excellence. Now is the moment to make that shift. Consider exploring how Connected Risk can work for your organization and take the first step towards a more streamlined, resilient, and confident compliance future. Your team (and your regulators) will thank you.
