How to transform compliance with artificial intelligence

Recently, I had the honor of writing a guest post for Corporate Compliance Insights.

The article, “Artificial Intelligence: The New Superpower for Compliance,” describes how today’s systemized processes and automated ERP systems may be essential for streamlining most back-office business operations, but advances in robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) are what’s making these systems dramatically more effective – particularly where auditing, decision-making, and GRC (Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance) are concerned.

We all know the problem: even with the automation of basic business workflows, time is a luxury that high-level decision-makers simply can’t afford. Reviewing and understanding the full implication of every piece of information that crosses their desk isn’t feasible, and many a busy manager has inadvertently approved something they later came to regret.

It often takes a high-profile violation to set the wheels of compliance and risk management in motion. Why? Blame it on the extra costs and inevitable red tape that all too often leads to slower decision-making and reduced operational efficiency.

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) solutions like AppZen can really make a difference. AI improves compliance and cuts costs without losing any of a company’s operational efficiency. By adopting “Natural Language Processing” (NLP) technology, AI understands and interprets the human language embedded in written text and can process reams of internal paper documents and electronic records – and scour enormous volumes of external data like laws and historical trends – in seconds. In a nutshell, a robotic auditor is capable of successfully detecting patterns and problems in everything from contracts to expense reports.

But the idea here isn’t for robots to replace human review and decision-making – it’s to enhance it. By implementing AI into core business processes, we get to combine the best of both worlds: real-time compliance, with cost-effective productivity.