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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

Big data and continuous improvement


Consider again the use of big data, this time to facilitate continuous improvement. Alistair Croll, in an eBook entitled “Planning for Big Data” published by O’Reilly Radar, informs this discussion of continuous improvement in a best practices compliance program. Croll believes that big data will allow continuous improvement through the “feedback economy.” This is a step beyond the information economy because you are using the information that you have generated and collected as a source of information to guide you going forward. Information itself is not the greatest advantage but using that information to prevent, detect and remediate in a compliance program going forward is.
The three prongs of any best practices compliance program are prevent, detect and remedy. Whether you consider the OODA loop or the big data supply chain feedback, this process, coupled with the data that is available to you should facilitate a more agile and directed compliance program. The feedback components allow you to make adjustments literally on the fly. If that does not meet the definition of continuous improvement, I do not know what does.
Three key takeaways:

  1. Use big data to continuously improve your compliance program.
  2. The OODA loop is an excellent way to think about using data to continuously improvement.
  3. Always remember the human element.