Neil Lustig, CEO of GAN Integrity, brings a non-lawyer perspective to compliance, Tom Fox says. Neil spent the first half of his career working at IBM as an engineer and later in sales and marketing. “For the second half of my career – the last 15 or so years – I’ve been running young technology startups and early stage companies based out of both Silicon Valley and New York,” he tells Tom and Valerie Charles. Tom comments that the compliance industry needs someone like Neil, who can talk about using data. In this week’s show, they talk about why compliance needs to embrace data and the future outlook for the industry.

The Change is Inevitable
Tom, Valerie, and Neil discuss why compliance should embrace data and automation. “Data injected into the [compliance] space changes you and makes your team much more strategic,” Neil remarks. “The data allows you the insights to add a whole different level of value to your company.” More automation in the industry will bring more data and more connections to external data sources. Compliance is inevitably heading in that direction, Neil predicts, so leaders need to plan and hire for the change. Tom comments that compliance officers should see data as an opportunity to add value, “rather than being Dr. No from the Land of No.” Neil agrees that it’s an opportunity to change how compliance is perceived and elevate the profession.
Getting a Better Answer
“Can you tell us a little bit about how your experience working in marketing technology has helped you … be a leader of how to utilize data in compliance?” Valerie asks Neil. “It’s actually about just getting a better answer,” he replies. People want to buy outcomes, such as lower risk and higher profitability; technology happens to be the path to those outcomes. As such, Neil advocates starting with the outcome you desire and then choosing the technology that would get you those results. He explains why GAN Integrity is poised to deliver results to the compliance industry through their innovative platform, and a grand vision “to build out this platform to have process automation for every compliance process in the modern enterprise.” 
Into The Future
Companies should be proactive about injecting automation into all their processes, Neil advises. Automation generates data, and that’s what the next few years will be about. He predicts that there will also be interoperability: companies will have access to and swap data with external data sources.  “We as an industry have to tackle making it easier to get the world of data into a place where it can be seamlessly integrated into a workflow [or] a process,” he comments. Leaders need to start recruiting teams in preparation for “the intersection of law and data and technology.” For GAN Integrity the opportunity is in simplifying compliance so that it becomes a valued partner to businesses.
 
Resources
GAN Integrity
Neil Lustig on LinkedIn