We can all agree that the impact of AI on our daily working lives has been huge, and this is particularly true when it comes to how AI can aid risk and compliance management. In fact, according to our exclusive report, half of businesses are already using AI to this end in their contract work.
That’s why, here, we’ll take a look at how AI can aid risk and compliance management, what’s driving this trend, what the business benefits are, and what the future of AI risk and compliance management could look like.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- How can AI aid risk and compliance management?
- What’s driving this trend behind adoption?
- What benefits is this bringing to businesses?
- How could AI risk and compliance management evolve in the future?
1. How can AI aid risk and compliance management?
When the AI tide arrived, people were immediately curious to see how it could help aid previously manual, labor-intensive work, such as contract risk and compliance management.
Previously, a lawyer or legal underwriter would have to pour over every last clause in a contract or other type of legal document. This process alone could take hours or even a day, depending on the length of the contract. Only after that can the work of editing begin, should any need to be made.
You can start to see why this process becomes so time-consuming and expensive to businesses, particularly if a contract is needed quickly. This can ultimately impact the bottom line as time really does equal money when it comes to getting contracts signed and deals closed.
Read also: Why almost 6-in-10 businesses are already seeing the benefits of AI in contracts
2. So how does AI help in all of this?
Essentially, AI can become the new hire working on your risk and compliance management. Think of it as a junior employee being overseen by someone more senior: your legal team. Your legal team will still need to check any issues AI reveals, and will need to correct them.
Take Oneflow’s AI Review package as an example. It reveals any issues in any given contract and can then give recommendations on how to fix them. This is a great example of how your legal team can gain back so much more time to work on other projects, and how any possible human errors can be minimized during the risk and compliance management process. After all, when pouring over the same contract for potentially hours, mistakes might well be made. We’re all only human, after all.
3. What’s driving this trend behind adoption?
According to research conducted by MIT, 75% of surveyed businesses have at least experimented with AI. Sample sizes vary between our research and that of MIT, but the findings paint the same picture: businesses are seeing the benefits of AI automation in repetitive, manual tasks, such as risk and compliance management.
It not only has a (good) financial impact, it also can improve employee productivity. According to that same piece of research from MIT, employee work productivity can be boosted by as much as 40% when AI takes care of the manual, repetitive tasks. If it’s good for the wallet and the ENPS score, it’s little wonder that so many companies are at least experimenting with AI technology in various business areas.
When it comes to risk and compliance management, we can all agree that even the most analytical of legal minds might well find this work less than engaging. Think of it this way, how much manual database work and sending did email marketing specialists have to do before the advent of automations there? Now, this same thing is happening for legal professionals when it comes to risk and compliance management.
Read also: What is contract management? Your ultimate guide
4. What benefits is this bringing to businesses?
We’ve already mentioned them in this article, but let’s now look at the three key benefits of AI in risk and compliance management in-depth.
Financial benefits: That all important bottom line – AI can help give you more breathing space as your contracts can be vetted in a fraction of the time, meaning that your sales team can start using them more quickly to close deals. But that’s not all. HR can sign new employees or roll out contracts more quickly, and your procurement team can get moving sooner too. This all thanks to AI being integrated into risk and compliance management workflows.
Time-saving benefits: Legislation can change. Your business needs can change. All of this takes time to implement. This is especially true for your legal team, who have to make sure that everything is done by the book. With AI aiding them in their contract risk and compliance management work, what might have taken hours or even days can now be greatly reduced. Not bad for only one tool!
Employee productivity: Employers want their employees to do their best – and employees want the satisfaction of a job well done. AI in risk and compliance management can help with both of those things. It makes sure that employers can help boost productivity, while removing a lot of the duller, more time-consuming work from employees.
Not bad for one AI package!
5. How could AI risk and compliance management evolve in the future?
The flippant answer to this would be, “how long is a piece of string?” We’re only at the very beginning of the possible applications of AI, including in contract work. Already, 77% of the estimated 30,000 SaaS companies worldwide have launched an AI functionality of some kind. Less than two years after the launch of ChatGPT, this is quite a statistic.
With this in mind, it’s quite clear that the applications of AI, as well as the tech itself, will only continue to develop and improve. For the sake of a quick thought experiment, when it comes to AI risk and compliance management, AI could well soon be programmed to update its settings based on legislative changes. Machine learning could also extend to the point where AI could learn about business needs and changes, identify those, and insert them into contracts.
This wouldn’t eliminate the role of a legal professional, but it would certainly help them work at an incredible pace and produce strong results at scale. With vetted contracts able to be sent more quickly than ever before, businesses would be able to respond to key changes in record timing, helping the bottom line more than ever before.
AI in risk and compliance management is evolving all the time. It just remains to be seen where we all end up with it.
Read also: AI contract management: What you need to know
The key takeaways
AI can aid risk and compliance management by reducing the manual, time-consuming task of reading through clause after clause in any given contract and finding possible errors or contradictions. What used to take hours or even days can now be done in minutes. This, in turn, leads to a boost in employee productivity, and is good for your bottom line.
All of this means that bringing AI into risk and compliance management makes for a fantastic ROI. So, why not sign up today? Discover how AI can help you and your organization.
