It is possible to not only maintain regulatory compliance, but also drive business value with business process management (BPM) technology.

Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, HIPAA, the Patriot Act, HACCP, 24CFR11 and other government and corporate compliance regulations all have the following three characteristics in common:

1. They were created to make ensure that organizations adhere to industry-specific laws, policies, and procedures.

2. They require the companies that operate in each industry to prove that they are adhering to the regulations through a series of audits.

3. Companies have spent millions of dollars to comply and are now seeking business value from their investment

John Hagerty, of AMR Research, said, "People realized you couldn't maintain (adequate) control over a bunch of spreadsheets and word-processing documents" without tying up a lot of manpower.

Where BPM Technology comes into Play

Achieving, maintaining, and proving corporate compliance with government regulations requires discipline around the processes that drive your business.

French Caldwell, of Gartner, said, "At minimum, you need something that's going to help you route all these documents for approvals and sign-offs and so on, and something that will preserve them for your external auditor."

Since enterprise-wide processes consist primarily of manual activities (work performed by people) any process management infrastructure must effectively incorporate human workers in order to effectively support a compliance framework.

Benefits of BPM

• Standardization
  The process will always be performed the same way, as designed.
• Privacy and Security
  Information is shared only with those with clearance, when they need to know it, and with only the pieces of information they need to perform their duties.
• Visibility
  Executive have dashboards that provide insight into the effectiveness of their compliance program. Process owners can see real-time reports about functioning, compliance-driven processes.
• Governance
  Laws, policies, and procedures set up by compliance personnel drive the business rules that steer the process.
• Auditability
  Compliance can be demonstrated at any time, rather than waiting for annual consulting engagements (audits).
• Agility
  As your business evolves, you can update processes instantly in order to maintain compliance, and you will never need to turn any updates into an IT project.
• Risk Reduction
  365-days-per-year visibility allows you to proactively drive compliance rather than waiting for an annual audit form which you requires you to react on someone else's terms.