What Is Process Compliance, and How Process Mining Helps
Enforce It

Data leaks, product recalls, regulatory fines, even business shutdowns. When process compliance fails, the consequences are real. Yet, staying compliant through manual tracking and reactive audits is a complicated, time-intensive job, especially in today’s stricter regulatory environment with more aggressive enforcement. Increasingly, businesses are turning to technology to reduce risk. Let’s look at how the landscape of process compliance is changing, and how businesses can adapt to the shifts with process mining solutions.

What is process compliance?

Process compliance is the practice of following the rules and best practices that keep a business running in line with established standards. These rules may be government regulations, industry guidelines, or the company’s own policies and procedures.

When your business follows standardized practices, tasks get done consistently. Built-in checks and balances catch mistakes before they become bigger problems. In addition, because all team members work from the same set of guidelines, roles and responsibilities are clear for better accountability and collaboration. At its core, process compliance serves as the backbone of a structured workflow for the day-to-day operations of your business.

Process compliance is paramount across industries

Businesses today navigate a growing web of international laws, standards, and industry-specific regulations. Getting clean and staying compliant means following complex rules while also upholding internal standards. Here’s a look at why businesses in key sectors prioritize process compliance to avoid penalties, reduce risk, and drive long-term success.

Healthcare: A critical process compliance challenge for healthcare providers is meeting Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations—strict rules on storing, accessing, and sharing patient data. To stay compliant, organizations must encrypt electronic health records (EHRs), use audit trails, and train employees on privacy best practices—or risk heavy fines and legal action.

Insurance: Process compliance helps prevent fraud, protect policyholder data, and ensure fair underwriting and claims processing. Insurance companies operating in the European Union must comply with Solvency II, which sets capital and risk management standards, while those in the U.S. must follow state insurance laws, which vary by jurisdiction.

Banking and finance: Financial services institutions must check customer identities, monitor for suspicious activity, and maintain meticulous records. They are subject to anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations that prevent fraud and financial crimes and financial reporting rules to curb corporate fraud.

Manufacturing: For manufacturers, process compliance ensures worker safety and product quality. Many manufacturers follow ISO 9001, an internationally recognized quality management standard that sets requirements for consistent production, process improvement, and customer satisfaction. Those in highly regulated sectors, like pharmaceuticals or automotive, must meet additional safety and compliance standards.

Retail: Retailers operating in the European Union must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which regulates data privacy and security, while those in the U.S. may be subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which regulates how consumer data is collected and used. Strong process compliance can also help retailers improve efficiency and prevent fraud while building customer loyalty.

Different forms of compliance

Process compliance is often seen as a way to avoid fines and legal risks, but it also provides real business advantages. Following regulations can help your business qualify for government tax incentives and subsidies, for example. Let’s explore the main types of process compliance and their impact on businesses.

Regulatory compliance relates to rules set by government agencies and regulatory bodies for specific industries. For example, pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. must comply with the FDA’s Good Manufacturing Practices for drug safety.

Legal compliance requires following existing laws and legal requirements. Labor laws, contract laws, and consumer protection laws all fall under this umbrella. American companies operating internationally, for example, must comply with anti-corruption laws like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to prevent bribery and fraud.

Financial compliance includes strict adherence to a wide range of regulations, intended to lower investor risk, prevent financial crimes and corporate fraud, and more. In addition, financial reporting standards like Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) provide consistent guidelines for financial statements.

Data and cybersecurity compliance helps protect personal and business data through security measures in place to protect systems and networks from illegal information access or cyber threats. Strong data compliance helps businesses reduce risks and save money in the long run.

Company policy compliance refers to the adherence to the internal rules and guidelines set by an organization. These policies help prevent legal issues, operational disruptions, and reputational damage, fostering a positive and productive work environment.

Workplace and safety compliance includes following workplace safety and labor laws to protect employees and ensure a safe work environment. However, many companies go beyond legal mandates to invest in additional safety protocols and improvements to protect workers and employee well-being initiatives to foster a healthier and more productive workforce.

Typical challenges with process compliance

Even companies dedicated to process compliance can accidentally fall out of compliance, especially without process mining or other operational intelligence tools for clear insights and quick issue resolution. Common challenges businesses come across include:

• Regulatory changes: Laws change quickly in the digital age, and each shift requires updates to data policies—making compliance difficult for companies with manual systems that can't quickly adapt to new requirements.
• Human error: People make mistakes, especially when performing repetitive or information-heavy tasks. In addition, employees may unintentionally violate compliance rules due to incomplete or insufficient training.
• Manual processes: Relying on manual tracking and reporting bumps up the risk of human errors that can lead to regulatory violations or missed compliance deadlines.
• Lack of visibility: Companies that rely on manual processes often don’t have real-time insights into how the business is running, so issues like missed deadlines, unauthorized access, or data mistakes may not be caught until problems occur.
• Poor documentation and record-keeping: Many compliance regulations require detailed record-keeping, but companies that manage this work via error-prone manual processes may struggle to prove regulatory adherence during inspections or audits.
• High costs: Meeting compliance standards often requires investment in new technology, leading some companies to skip it to save money. However, without these investments, teams often end up wasting more money and time manually tracking compliance—and still run higher risks of costly fines.

How process mining and task mining improve compliance

Many common process compliance challenges can be managed or avoided altogether with process mining and operational intelligence solutions. These technologies use AI and automation tools to analyze business process data in real time and give companies the visibility and insights they need to stay compliant and improve workflows. Some of the best-known benefits of using process mining to improve process compliance include:

• End-to-end process visibility: By providing real-time insights into operations, process mining helps businesses quickly identify any non-compliant activities.
• Automated compliance monitoring, alerting, and reporting: Process mining spots changes from standard processes and can send real-time alerts to correct potential errors. This technology can also be used to automatically maintain detailed logs and audit trails.
• Process standardization: By ensuring best practices and standard workflows across teams, process mining helps businesses consistently meet regulatory requirements.
• Risk detection: Process mining identifies anomalies early so businesses can address risks before they escalate. AI-powered insights can also help analyze the root causes of compliance violations to prevent issues from arising in the future.
• Adaptation to evolving regulations: As regulations change, businesses can use process mining to dynamically update processes for ongoing compliance.
• Lower compliance costs: Process mining helps streamline compliance processes to improve efficiency and reduce related costs.

ABBYY's purpose-built Process AI delivers next-generation process compliance

Amid stricter regulations and increasing penalties, the financial costs alone of falling out of compliance are extremely high today. At the same time, staying compliant has become more challenging due to cybersecurity threats, constantly evolving regulations, and the complexities of global trade. What once could be handled manually now requires smarter tools to keep up. Plus, the growing adoption of AI in companies and the emergence of agents will only increase the challenge of process compliance and accelerate the impact of violations.

That’s where ABBYY Process AI comes in. Our platform goes beyond traditional process and task mining to offer end-to-end process intelligence, combining discovery, analysis, and monitoring with advanced prediction and simulation capabilities. By creating a digital twin of business processes, it helps organizations visualize workflows, detect compliance risks, and ensure adherence to regulations—even before changes are implemented.

To learn more about how ABBYY Process AI can improve process compliance for your organization, contact one of our experts today.