In the current business climate, it is no secret that businesses are obligated to comply with several regulations. The sheer number of rules and regulations can be daunting — and the cost of compliance is astronomical. Therefore, a compliance audit is undeniably crucial.
What is a compliance audit?
A compliance audit is a thorough examination of organizational conformity to regulatory requirements.
During a compliance audit, internal or external auditors examine every aspect of organizational operations to determine:
- Whether the business is following its internal policies.
- Whether the business is adhering to external regulations in each area of its operations.
- Whether the adequacy of existing policies and procedures in place.
- Whether the business could improve any existing internal policies or procedures.
- Whether employees are aware of the existing policies and procedures and whether they are fulfilling their responsibilities under these guidelines.
- Whether there has been any fraud committed against the company or any policies have been violated.
A compliance audit scope varies depending on whether the business is public or private, what sorts of data it manages, and if it sends or maintains critical financial data.
Audits can be performed by internal resources or through an external provider depending upon the size and complexity of the organizational data environment.
But in each case, organizations must be able to prove compliance by generating an audit trail. Audit trails are produced using data from event log management software, as well as internal and external audits. LMS is one such effective tool that helps in producing effective audit trails using LMS reports.
What is LMS?
Learning Management System (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of eLearning courses.
Most LMS systems have some form of reporting capability. After all, reporting is a pivotal part of the learning process. Reports are a great way to see trends in learning, spot gaps in training, and prove the value of your training program.
LMS software generates reports that help track the progress of learners, identify the areas of learning where learners need improvement, and automatically certify the deserving students. LMS can make it easy by allowing organizations to automate the process of compliance training and reporting.
However, reports are only as good as the data that goes into them. For example, if you’re a compliance manager and you run a report on employee compliance training status. Then you need to know that the information in that report is accurate. You need to know that every person who has completed training is reflected in that report and every person who has not completed their training is also reflected in the report. When you share that report with your CFO or the CEO, they need to know they can trust it too.
That’s where compliance audit trails come in!
What is a compliance audit trail?
A compliance audit trail is a record of every action, event, or activity performed on your data by a human or a system. As a result, it might be tied to record generation, alteration, or deletion, or it could be a series of automated system operations (Syslog).
Of fact, the daily amount of audit logs can range from a few hundred for small businesses to hundreds of thousands for huge corporations, making tracking them extremely difficult. As a result, having an automatic tracking system is beneficial, like an LMS
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are online platforms for distributing online learning content and managing online coursework. The goal of an LMS is to provide a platform for instructors and learners to collaborate on course materials, assignments, tests, and reports.
How compliance audit benefits from LMS
Here’s how LMS can help with compliance audit and audit trail generation:
1. LMS can generate reports:
LMS audit trails automatically generate reports that can benefit a compliance audit. It can also provide visualizations of your data to show the effectiveness of your program over time. In addition, an LMS audit trail allows you to gauge the success of your efforts by comparing those metrics against similar programs at other companies. You can also maintain brand logos and other branding elements in reports with an efficient LMS.
2. LMS can be a time tracker:
Companies that want to keep track of the number of hours their employees spend on training rely heavily on learning management systems. It ensures that they are following policies and procedures.
3. LMS can be a central information system:
LMS can be an efficient tool to maintain info about demographics, educational qualifications, job profiles of every employee in the organization and can make it centrally available to every department to follow the same pattern.
4. LMS can help in the documentation:
To prove compliance with regulations, you have to document everything. This means keeping logs of everything from invoice payments to timesheets for employees. You might also want to keep a log of any social media postings that mention your brand name — those can be important in terms of complying with online marketing laws. AN LMS can help in documenting every detail of employee job hours.
Most LMSs have an integration feature with a social media platform that can help in maintaining records of social media reviews and postings for the company.
5. LMS can help in setting up key regulations:
A good practice is to set up a system that tracks your company’s compliance with the key regulations, so you can easily see what you’ve done and what you need to do next.
LMS can provide compliance training all over the organization as per job requirements and gaps observed by the compliance audit.
The Benefits of Learning Management Systems Audit Trails:
LMS audit trails provide the information to support compliance audits. Because the records relating to all activities performed by an individual user include not only the completed tasks but also the steps taken to complete them.
An audit trail is a log of actions taken by a person or an automated system. It helps in determining who made decisions when what they decided and why they decided it.
LMS audit trails provide detailed records of particular actions such as login attempts, document documents created or deleted, errors that occurred while working on a website, and accesses made to various parts of the website. This information is critical for conducting compliance audits.
Conclusion:
Compliance audits can be stressful and time-consuming — so it’s good to know there are tools to help you. Learning management systems (LMSs) can help you plan audit strategies, collect data, track training assignments, and even generate reports for auditors. Some LMSs also offer integration with other software programs to simplify the process.
So, if you’re planning your first compliance audit and looking for a way to streamline the process, learn LMS reports and LMS audit trails for compliance audits.
The post How Can LMS Reports Make Compliance Audits Easy? appeared first on Jobacle.com.
