How to Develop Corporate Compliance Software?

Are you wondering how to build corporate compliance software?

A corporate compliance program facilitates a company to adhere to laws, regulations, industry standards, and internal policies that govern its business operations. The lack of a compliance program could lead to legal consequences, not to forget reputational damage.

Given the importance of following a robust compliance program, 34% of organizations outsource some or all of their compliance functionality. Advanced risk compliance programs have grown by 29%, as reported by Navex Global.

Developing compliance software requires a deep understanding of industry compliance standards, robust software development frameworks, software security techniques, advanced technologies like Blockchain and AI, etc. 

If you don’t have a professional team with this relevant expertise to take on the complex task, then submit a request for a complimentary discovery call, and one of our tech account managers who managed similar projects will contact you shortly.

Let’s see how you can develop corporate compliance software.

Build a Corporate Compliance Software Solution

Go through the following steps to develop compliance software:

1. Project Scope and Requirements Gathering

Start by defining the objective of your compliance project. For example, it could be identifying, prioritizing, and managing existing or potential legal or policy non-compliance threats. 

Next, define the scope of your compliance software, including the laws and regulations your company must comply with in all jurisdictions where it conducts business, in addition to the company’s internal policies. 

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You should do the following:

• Identify regulations and policies your compliance software needs to handle. 
  • For example, healthcare business processes need to conform with
    • HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act);
    • HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act);
    • BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), etc. 
  • Similarly, if your run a fintech business in the US, you require software that assists you in compliance with standards like
    • FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network);
    • FTC (Federal Trade Commission);
    • FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority);
    • CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), etc.
• Collaborate with compliance experts, legal professionals, and stakeholders to understand the compliance requirements relevant to your industry and region.
• Prepare a document entailing your corporate compliance software scope, including compliance challenges it would help solve. 

2. Feature Definition

Decide the features you want to build in your corporate compliance program software. These features should reflect your identified compliance requirements. Prioritize the development of functionality based on their importance and impact. 

Some of the features you should consider developing in your compliance software include the following:

• Policy tracking: Create automated workflows to track police updates, acknowledgment, and adherence.
• Audit and reporting: Develop a system to track compliance activities and user actions. Provide customizable reports for monitoring compliance activities.
• Documentation management: Implement a system to manage and store compliance-related documents, policies, etc.
• Risk assessment: Create a feature to assist in risk analysis, mitigation techniques, real-time reporting, etc.
• Notifications and alerts: Real-time monitoring and alert system help make timely adjustments to the system.

3. Project Team

You require professionals to undertake the development of a complex compliance management system. Hire for the following roles:

• UI/UX designers design interactive and engaging software user interfaces;
• Front-end developers develop front-end elements and application layouts according to prototypes by UI/UX design team;
• Backend developers develop the business logic and core features, perform backend integrations, etc.
• DevOps engineers build deployment pipelines and help automate development workflows;
• Software testers conduct test routines to test the application’s functional and non-functional specifications.
• Industry knowledge experts help build compliance solutions for various use cases like compliance incident management, policy management, etc., that conform to the applicable laws and meet industry standards.

Choose a hiring platform to build an excellent team for your project. You might consider freelance marketplaces an easy and quick option, however, we urge you to consider all the pros and cons of hiring freelancers.

While freelance platforms offer you many developers with varied skills and experience, the option is very risky. There is no stringent vetting process and not enough management support. Two very important requirements for a complex application development project, like compliance management systems.

We recommend you opt for a credible software development company, like DevTeam.Space, with experience in developing critical and complex software solutions.

All our developers go through a thorough vetting process that consists of technical interviews and hands-on projects. Senior developers who have built similar software solutions manage these dev teams and free you of additional project management responsibility.

Moreover, developers and dev teams at DevTeam.Space follow an AI-powered agile process that assists in effective project management via task assignments, daily/weekly updates, close communication with clients, etc.

4. Compliance Software Design

Develop a high-level architecture design for your compliance software. 

• Break down the software into smaller functional components that meet specific requirements. These include user interfaces, business logic, data storage, etc.
• Determine how each component will interact with other modules and external systems.
• Map out the data flow between different components to ensure smooth communication.
• Select an architecture style that suits your system requirements. Some common software architectures include microservices, layered, event-driven, etc.
  • For example, you can opt for a microservices architecture where each independent microservice could focus on a specific compliance feature. This architecture ensures flexibility, agility, and easier maintenance.
  • Event-driven architecture could help you build software with asynchronous communication between components. The software could generate events for risk assessments, policy updates, etc. 
• Design an interactive and intuitive user interface that conforms to UX/UI design practices, such as the following:
  • Clean design;
  • Legible typography;
  • Color coding;
  • Visual representation;
  • Consistent design elements;
  • Responsive design;
  • User-friendly forms.
• Refer to the design guidelines, such as Microsoft Fluent Design System, IBM Design Language, etc.

5. Corporate Compliance Application Development

Your development team can now start the software development process that includes the following technologies:

Web application development

You need developers with the following skills to build a web-based compliance application:

Front-end development

• Core web technologies like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript for structuring web content, styling web pages, adding interactivity, etc.
• Modern JavaScript frameworks like React and Angular to build dynamic and responsive web interfaces. These frameworks offer a component-based architecture that helps manage complex user interfaces.
• State management libraries like Redux.
• CSS frameworks like Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap, and Bulma for consistent UI designs via ready-to-use components and layouts.

Backend development

• Server-side runtime environments like Node.js or Python for building scalable web applications.
• Web application frameworks like Express.js or Django to manage server-side logic.

Desktop application development

Technologies that meet specific requirements for a desktop application and your developers should have experience with include the following:

• Programming languages like C# for Windows application development. Java for cross-platform desktop application development.
• Frameworks like Electron help develop cross-platform desktop applications using CSS, HTML, and JS.
• Qt framework, based on C++, helps build native desktop applications.
• WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) framework by Microsoft to build modern and feature-rich Windows desktop applications.

Database development

This includes designing, developing, and maintaining an efficient database system. Some tasks include the following:

• Understand compliance data requirements, like data types, conversions, constraints, etc.
• Choose an appropriate database model, such as SQL or NoSQL.
  • The choice between SQL and NoSQL depends on the specific requirements of your compliance software, such as the nature of data, complexity of features, scalability needs, etc.
  • If your business data has a well-defined structure with complex nature and requires data integrity, go for a SQL database like Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL. 
  • Alternatively, if you have large volumes of unstructured data or semi-structured data with schema flexibility and require high scalability, then a NoSQL database, like MongoDB, Elasticsearch, etc., would be a better choice.
• Create an entity relationship diagram (ERD) to visualize data entities, attributes, and relationships.
• Design database schema and tables, perform normalization, map data, define indexing strategy, implement access control, etc.

Cloud computing

Cloud infrastructure offers several advantages to corporations in software application development, deployment, and maintenance. It helps build scalable, flexible, and cost-effective software. Cloud resources also introduce agility in the development process and provide cutting-edge technology tools.

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To utilize cloud computing resources by a leading cloud services provider, like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, do the following:

• Choose a cloud infrastructure model, such as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), Software-as-a-service, etc., based on your software development and deployment needs. For example, AWS offers the following and much more:
  •  Amazon EC2 provides virtual machines to configure and install software stack, including operating systems, databases, etc.; 
  • Amazon RDS enables setting up, operating, and scaling of relational databases; 
  • AWS Beanstalk help deploy and manage web applications;
  • AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service deploys, manages, and scales containerized applications using Kubernetes.
• Set up virtual machines to run compliance software in the cloud.
• Utilize cloud storage services to store compliance data, documents, etc.
• Configure virtual networks, firewalls, etc.
• Configure auto-scaling for automatically adjusting computing resources according to the demand.
• Set up load balancers to improve application availability.
• Utilize cloud-based development tools, IDEs, etc.
• Monitor and log resource utilization, application performance, potential issues, etc.

API development

Compliance software usually consists of several interconnected modules, and APIs can help your developers build these modules independently with easy scalability. Seamless data exchange between software features is also possible via APIs. 

APIs also help integration with third-party services without building them from scratch, such as social media integrations, payment gateways, etc. However, your developers should practice caution while introducing a lot of external dependencies in your software system.

You developers should perform the following while developing and integrating APIs:

• Define the purpose and scope of APIs;
• Choose API protocols, like REST, GraphQL, etc., depending on data exchange requirements;
• Create API endpoints, request/response formats, and authentication mechanisms, such as OAuth, API keys, etc.
• Define data formats, like JSON, XML, etc., for requests and responses;
• Develop API error handling mechanisms with HTTP status codes, error messages, etc.

Development and Operations (DevOps)

DevOps practices enable automation, continuous improvement, and collaboration throughout the compliance software development lifecycle. 

Your developers need to implement DevOps practices, such as the following:

• Set up continuous integration pipelines to automate code integration. Build, test, and validate code changes as your developers commit them;
  • Use tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, etc., to ensure code quality.
• Automate code deployment in various environments, like development, staging, and production environments. Implement continuous deployment (CD) pipelines to reliably and consistently deploy code changes. 
  • Use tools like Kubernetes and Docker.
• Use IaaS tools like AWS CloudFormation to define and provision cloud resources for compliance software.
• Automate configuration management of software, databases, services, etc., to ensure consistency in different environments. 
  • Use tools like Ansible, Puppet, etc.

Application Security

Software security is essential as it helps secure sensitive compliance-related data and prevents security breaches. Your software developers should perform the following:

• Adopt secure coding practices for preventing security vulnerabilities like cross-site scripting, SQL injections, etc.;
• Use proper software authentication mechanisms, like role-based access control (RBAC);
• Implement encryption algorithms to encrypt and protect sensitive data at rest and transit;
• Implement secure session management via session tokens and timeouts;
• Enforce API security via API key management, setting rate limits, implementing access roles, etc.

6. Training and Education

Train your corporation employees on the new compliance software. Design interactive training materials, including tutorials, how-to guides, FAQs, etc., to enable end users to use every software feature effectively.

7. Compliance Software Integration

Integrate compliance software with other business applications and modules, such as HR, sales, marketing, etc. Ensure each feature integrates seamlessly with your business operations. Moreover, the data exchange should be without errors. 

The integration process includes the following:

• Identify the integration points, including functions, data, etc., that need to be shared among modules;
• Choose an integration approach, such as API integrations, webhooks, database connections, etc.
• Plan data mapping and transformation. Consider data validation, data type conversions, error handling, etc.

8. Software Testing

Compliance management software testing is a critical phase in the application development process.

It ensures that all functional and non-functional requirements are met, software adheres to compliance standards, and offers a reliable user experience.

Your team should conduct several testing methods to validate different regulatory compliance software functionalities. These include the following:

Functional testing

• Test each compliance feature and ensure it works as expected according to the decided requirements.

Integration testing

• Test that each module interacts perfectly with other software modules. 
• The data exchange with other external systems, APIs, etc., should be accurate.

Security testing

• Conduct security tests to verify no potential vulnerabilities in the compliance management system.
• Perform penetration testing, code security reviews, etc.

User acceptance testing

• Involve all concerned users, including CTO, compliance managers, employees, etc., to ensure each software functionality works as they require and assists them in conducting compliant operations.
• Collect and analyze user feedback and utilize it to improvise your compliance software application.

Performance testing

• Test the performance of the corporate compliance management system under different user loads and usage levels.
• Test responsiveness, scalability, and resource utilization of the regulatory compliance system under various scenarios.

Accessibility testing

• Perform accessibility testing to ensure the software is accessible to all according to the guidelines by WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), ISO 9241-171 (an international standard for designing accessible software), etc.

Regression testing

• Conduct regression testing and ensure that new updates and changes to the system do not introduce new errors or issues in the software application.

9. Compliance Software Deployment

After you are satisfied with the performance of your compliance software and are sure it meets all the functional and non-functional requirements, you can start the deployment process.

Your developers need to do the following:

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• Set up the production environment according to the hardware, software, and configurations used during the testing and development.
• Ensure the production environment meets compliance software security, scalability, and performance requirements.
• Perform code compilation and packaging into deployable artifacts like executable files, container images, etc.
• Prepare automation scripts and utilize tools like GitLab CI/CD to accelerate consistent error-free deployment.

10. Continuous Improvement

Continuously monitor compliance software performance. Also, plan for regular updates, patches, upgrades, etc., to keep your corporate compliance software up to date with the latest technology and compliance requirements.

Collect feedback from users and stakeholders, identify areas for improvement, and improve your compliance software according to user suggestions.

11. Compliance Validation

This is essential to ensure your software complies effectively with regulatory requirements and policies. Collaborate with compliance experts for accurate interpretation and implementation of compliance obligations.

Validate compliance-related workflows, verify data security requirements, etc.

Planning a Corporate Compliance Software Solution?

A custom compliance software solution helps align your specific business processes with compliance standards in your industry. 

You, as a business CEO or CTO, might be looking forward to building compliance software to achieve the benefits of streamlined compliance adherence.

You require expert software developers with experience in a broad range of cutting-edge technologies and development practices to develop compliance management processes.

DevTeam.Space can help you via an experienced software developers community. All our developers are dedicated and skilled in the latest technologies.

Moreover, senior developers with experience in building similar software assist you in managing these developers and the overall project.

If you wish to know more about how we can help you build robust and secure compliance software, send us your initial project specifications via this quick form. One of our account managers will get in touch with you shortly to discuss further details.

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