Compliance isn’t sexy, but it could save - or destroy - your business

We don’t want to hurt any feelings here, but we have to speak our truth: compliance isn’t sexy. James Dean did not achieve Hollywood icon status for being Compliant Without A Cause. Luke Skywalker and co would not have kicked off a fifty-year saga as part of the Compliance Alliance (tax codes didn’t enter canon until the fourth movie). Innovation, not organisation, is always more alluring.

We say this out of love - some of our best friends are accountants - but compliance is boring, and that’s why it rarely ranks at the top of the management to-do list. Nor does your company’s document management system, contract approval process, or many of the other meat-and-potatoes processes that keep businesses running. But the financial stakes are steadily rising, to the point where back-office processes join product launches and sales successes as something that can make or break your business. 

Part of this is, yes, the boring but crushing impact of internal dysfunction. Quite apart from the obvious productivity hit from team members burning their workday on repeated or redundant work, inefficient internal processes hurt the service you give to your customers - and they’ll notice. Almost a third of managers say they’ve lost business from bad document management, according to a recent survey by YouGov for Workiro, and our recent webinar The Folder Illusion uncovers the many other frustrations caused by outdated company filing systems.

But the risks are getting much, much larger. A massive financial liability looms for businesses operating in the UK thanks to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA), which was passed in 2023, and will require your business to be actively preventing fraud. The potential fines are unlimited, and having key data spread across different platforms, users and filing systems is likely to be a major risk here: having three iterations of the budget file floating around, or a contract-signing “process” that’s five increasingly terse email threads, is not something you want to be pinning your defence on. 

On the other side of the coin, there’s the eternally-escalating risk of cyber attacks, which have seen a sharp uptick in recent years, harming organisations from the NHS to newspapers to local councils. Disconnected systems and scattered files are the perfect environment for attackers to sneak in, particularly via innocuously-looking email attachments. 

Research by Proofpoint shows that 73% of organisations are targeted by email-based attacks, and not just the majors - 69% of small businesses fell victim to cyberattacks in 2023. 

Worse yet, the same Proofpoint survey showed that 71% of staff are knowingly cutting corners on security guidelines. The reason: they’re trying to get their jobs done. Chief justifications given were convenience (44%), to save time (39%) and to meet an urgent deadline (24%). These efficiency shortcuts open the door to intruders, and the impact can be devastating - 60% of small businesses fold within six months of a cyberattack.

The list of threats, and the financial risks associated with them, is only increasing. So is the list of processes, tasks and software tools you need to use each day. The burden will inexorably become unmanageable unless you enshrine efficiency and compliance at the heart of your business, using a tool like Workiro. It seamlessly integrates with your existing CRM, ERP and communication platforms to create a single source of truth for all your business data. 

Files are automatically tagged, sorted and stored in a central online repository that can be viewed from within your existing platforms, with a complete audit trail from creation to customer approval and back again. It means you can take control of your data, support your team and resolve the million tiny frustrations that come from having to hunt down the files and information you need to do your job - while having rock-solid compliance and security. 

It’s not sexy. But it represents a huge potential boost in productivity and staff happiness, and protection from all the security risks associated with old-fashioned document management - that should at least make it easier for you to focus on more appealing projects. To find out how Workiro can transform your business, contact one of our specialists today.