The impact of AI on the future of policy management software
- Dan Hawtrey
- 28 November 2024
Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) has started to increase its influence on the technology we use everyday in the workplace. Organisations are experimenting with and implementing solutions like Microsoft Copilot. These not only have the potential to supercharge productivity by eliminating repetitive tasks, but also to go further and provide the opportunity to rethink and reengineer basic processes.
As AI is integrated across different workplace technologies including policy management software and becomes more prominent in different products, we will start to see tangible change. While it is still relatively early days for AI, the pace of change may well be rapid.
How AI is impacting policy management software
Policy management software already helps to support compliance, increase productivity and reduce risks. But AI will make an even bigger difference to compliance software and solutions by:
- Increasing compliance by ensuring employees can find and read the policies, SOPs and other controlled documents they need to do their jobs and make the right decisions, with greater accuracy and precision.
- Minimising risk by helping to monitor compliance and identify issues before they happen at greater speed and scale.
- Streamlining administration through the smart automation of repetitive tasks and reporting in increasingly intelligent ways.
- Future-proofing your organisation by helping to keep policies and other controlled documents up to date in an increasingly complex and fast-moving world.
How AI itself is driving the need for more controlled documents
Developments in AI are not only impacting and influencing the solutions we can use to drive compliance but are also bringing new challenges that mean organisations need to ramp up their approaches to policy management, compliance monitoring and controlled documents.- Policy management to support cybersecurity
- Cybersecurity is top of mind for many IT and risk professionals with new AI-powered threats from cybercriminals that are continually evolving. Employees must have access to cybersecurity-related policies and procedures, and be aware of changes, so everyone can stay one step ahead of the criminals.
- Access to SOPs that are evolving or need to be reinforced
- AI will change the way we work for the better and the detail behind policies and procedures may change. At the same time, AI makes it easier for teams to start doing things differently, and it is possible that some “local” teams may start to change their processes in ways that are risky and not approved centrally. Having easy access at the point of need to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that may either be changing frequently, or need to be emphasised, has never been more important.
- Controlled documents that act as guardrails for AI itself
- AI itself comes with a whole heap of risks that range from IP protection and data privacy through to bias and ethical concerns. Generative AI is also subject to the odd hallucination that spins up inaccuracies. Employees need clear guidance on the use of generative AI and what is permitted and what isn’t, with easy access to controlled documents such as AI-related policies and guidelines.
How will AI-powered compliance software evolve?
Many policy management and compliance software solutions like Xoralia already use AI to help drive intelligent automation and deliver better compliance, greater efficiency, reduced costs and better operations. For example, we use Microsoft’s AI-powered search capabilities within Xoralia so that employees can better find the policies they need in their everyday work.
We see AI influencing future policy management solutions and compliance software in a number of different directions:
- Supporting greater engagement with policies.
- Changing the way we query policies, SOPs and guidelines.
- Bringing employees closer to the policies they need.
- Automating monitoring with wider reach and complexity.
- Supporting horizon and legislative scanning.
1.How AI will support better engagement with policies
Policies, SOPs, guidelines and other controlled documents are very important. They provide real-world support and value for managers and employees by establishing clarity, driving efficiency and reducing personal risks.
At the same time, it’s very difficult to build engagement around policies which tend to be long, dry and boring. At worst policies can be written in “legalese” and can be very hard to understand because they are written in ways that make sense to the team responsible for enforcing a policy, but not really for anybody else.
Policies, SOPs and guidelines are meant to be read, understood and acted upon by employees. If that isn’t happening, then a controlled document is more or less pointless. We think generative AI has huge potential to make policy content more engaging and to encourage policy owners to create alternative formats that will drive engagement and make policies more actionable.
It is possible to:
- Generate shorter guidelines from a policy.
- Rewrite a policy in a more engaging style or targeted to a particular group.
- Translate it into multiple languages.
- Generate summaries and FAQs for quicker scanning.
- Experiment with alternative formats like podcasts and videos.
All of the above, have the potential to transform engagement with policies by reducing dry, dreary and never-ending documents to something far more digestible and palatable.
2.How AI will change the way employees query policies, SOPs and guidelines
At the moment an employee with a particular question or issue which is answered by a policy may have to find a controlled document or page and then scan through it to find the answer they need. While in some cases that works, it is still quite inefficient overall and feels like an effort for the user. In many cases an employee may just ask a colleague or simply not refer to a policy, SOP or guideline.
Generative Ai has the power to truly change the way employees query controlled documents in two ways:
- Use natural language to ask key questions.
- Get answers to questions directly without necessarily having to read the whole document.
While chatbots have been around for a while now, they have never quite fulfilled their potential. Generative AI is dramatically improving what is possible. Of course, there are still some challenges in ensuring answers are going to be fully compliant. But overall, the ability to directly ask policy-related questions using everyday language and get quick answers is a game-changer that will support greater compliance.
3.Bringing employees closer to the polices they need
One of the exciting possibilities of generative AI is to help ensure employees not only have access to the policies they need at the right time, but also access to the policies and guidelines that they didn’t know they needed. The advances in AI bring significant advances to search to ensure that employees can find exactly what they need, but also to make suggestions for reading based on tasks they are completing, their online behaviour, profile, emerging areas of compliance and more. For example, perhaps somebody is travelling to an unstable or dangerous country for the first time, An AI-powered policy management solution can make intelligent suggestions about all the policies and guidelines they might want to read to help prepare for the trip.4.Automate monitoring with wider reach and complexity
Compliance and risk management is also sometimes about monitoring for potential incidents and then preventing them from happening. This is particularly important in heavily regulated industries. While there are important data privacy guardrails that need to be in place, AI has the power to monitor areas such as email, chat, documents and other channels in more sophisticated ways, at both greater scale and speed.
For example, an organisation may have some kind of monitoring in place across their Microsoft 365 estate in order to identify if anyone is sharing customer credit card numbers vie email or chat. We can see AI-powered governance solutions identifying a wider set of risks and then searching for these more comprehensively, while also weeding out any red herrings. We think this will help to prevent more incidents.
5.Making horizon and legislative scanning achievable
The world is complex. There are always new legal, regulatory and compliance areas that need to be considered – on AI for example – and these can change for each country or jurisdiction. In real terms this means that policies and procedures will need to change accordingly from time to time. However, the occurrences when this needs to happen can be easy to miss.
AI has the power to keep an eye on major compliance changes and then make intelligent suggestions about which policies you might need to change. This will help to lower the barriers to successful horizon and legislative scanning so that your policies are kept up to date and everyone stays compliant.
There is also the intriguing opportunity to take key internal decisions and meetings, for example a board meeting where particular actions were decided or the agreement of a new internal HR strategy, and let AI make recommendations about the policies that you may need to change.
The future of policy management and governance software
Policy management and governance software is all about reducing risk and increasing compliance in ways that reduce administration, effort and cost. AI has a strong role to play in improving and broadening what policy management software and governance solutions can offer. Here at Xoralia, we’re already excited about the future and what AI will bring.
If you’d like to discuss how AI will impact policy management software and how it could help you, then get in touch!
The story behind Xoralia
Xoralia was built by the team at Content Formula, an intranet and digital workplace consultancy that has built SharePoint intranets for some of the world’s most famous companies. Now, most companies want their policies and procedures on the intranet but they don’t just want to store them there, they also want tools to help better manage them. Over the years we came across just about every single requirement for a policy management system. As this article above explains, there are gaps in SharePoint and so we never built what in our mind was the perfect policy management system.
However, one of our clients challenged us to build something for them that filled all the gaps but still used SharePoint at the back end. We had a great relationship with them and agreed to share the budget to do this, provided we could then market the solution to others. That was in 2019. We’re now on version 3 of Xoralia and the product has grown and evolved a lot.
3 benefits you can expect from Xoralia
Make it easy to find policies
Centralised policy library with powerful search and filtering
Reduce administrative burden
Automations and notifications so that all policy tasks are carried out on time
Demonstrate compliance and best practice
Sophisticated tracking and dashboards to drive and measure compliance.
And lots more!
What our clients say
Xoralia drives user engagement and compliance...
The platform's user attestation functionality has been particularly impactful, leading to a remarkable increase from ~50% to 86% in user attestation within a matter of weeks.
Rian Stuart, IT Manager, Twinstream
...simplifies our policy management...
It not only simplifies our policy management, but also enhances our overall compliance posture and has proven to be a significant time-saver for our organization.
Nadja Friedrichs, Vice President of HR, Boyum IT
...single source of truth and access for employees...
We successfully rolled out the tool with a minimal internal learning curve and achieved a 97% read / acknowledgement rate on our first assigned policy.
How to get started with Xoralia
Step 1: request a demo
Fill out our form and we will be in touch to arrange a time. You can even book a time yourself.
Step 2: get a price proposal
If you think Xoralia is for you ask us for a quote. This will set out any options you may have.
Step 3: install and launch
We’ll install Xoralia in your environment (or you can do it yourself). We’ll provide training and support to get you up and running quickly
Here's what you'll get
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Central policy library
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Search and filter tools
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Mandatory read policies with attestations
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Quizzes
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Notifications and alerts
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Employee dashboard
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Line manager dashboard
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Works on mobile, in Teams and SharePoint
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New policy creation workflows
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Policy update workflows
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Review and approval gates
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Policy version history
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Compliance dashboard
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Audit trail
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Full reporting
And last but not least:
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Professional implementation service and support
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Evergreen software – frequent updates and improvements
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Comes with our "it just works" support warranty – we’ll fix any bugs, often before you even notice
Ready to get started?
Connect with us to streamline your policy management and ensure effortless compliance.
Perfect policy management solution for Microsoft 365 users.
I highly recommend Xoralia to any organisation seeking a robust and user-friendly policy management solution.
Xoralia seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365, particularly with SharePoint and Teams, aligning perfectly with our company's daily workflow..
Rian Stuart, IT Manager, Twinstream
