The regulatory landscape continues to evolve at breakneck speed, with compliance leaders facing unprecedented challenges, from geopolitical shifts to emerging technologies. Our recent Compliance in Action Virtual Summit brought together industry experts to share practical strategies for building resilient, forward-thinking compliance programs that turn regulatory complexity into competitive advantage.

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Here are the six takeaways that emerged from our expert discussions with actionable strategies you can implement immediately to strengthen your compliance program.

The days of compliance operating in isolation are over. As Stefano Tortis, Head of International Compliance at Cardinal Health, emphasized during our supply chain integrity panel: "There is not a unique department in Cardinal Health that can follow all of these risks. Each department in the company looks at something different, which is also the challenge then that we need to coordinate and align each other on the results."

The solution lies in creating shared definitions and embedding compliance directly into business operations. Laurence Houlbert, Compliance Director at Chemelex, captured this perfectly: "Compliance earns its seat at the table by enabling the business and embedding review into operations."

Establish common definitions for compliance terms across all departments

Leverage technology transitions (ERP, CRM implementations) as opportunities to realign systems

Position compliance as a business partner, not an add-on function

As Andrew McBride, Founder and CEO of Integrity Bridge LLC, noted: "The more that we can do to be more coordinated and more efficient in our process, the better." Misaligned teams don't just create inefficiencies, they actively increase both risk exposure and operational costs.

When regulatory storms hit, successful organizations execute well-rehearsed protocols. Roland van Weelden, Chief Compliance Officer, Global Anti-Trust Counsel and Company Secretary at Flora Food Group BV, said: "In moments of crisis, an investigation, a regulatory incident, success depends on a well thought out and documented process. Don't improvise, go back to the protocols, go back to the basics. Train on them and use them."

But crisis readiness extends beyond documentation. As van Weelden observed, “We need to emphasize both resilience and trust within the team. It’s important that everyone knows what they can expect from one another, especially in crisis situations or investigations. That mutual trust enables us to adapt and succeed together.”

Critical components of crisis-ready programs:

Document clear response protocols before incidents occur

Establish designated process owners for different crisis scenarios

Build a culture of trust and shared responsibility within your team

Regularly test and update your response plans

The investment in preparation pays dividends when pressure mounts. Teams with established protocols and mutual trust maintain control and effectiveness during high-stakes situations.

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn't just hype, it's already a practical tool for compliance efficiency. Samantha McMackin, Senior Director of Compliance Office at Cargill, shared a pragmatic approach: "We wanted to find ways that we could use it ourselves...not just be the ones who are talking about responsible AI and helping set standards."

Cargill's success came from starting with approved, existing AI tools to solve immediate problems, like translating and summarizing cases in multiple languages, saving hours of manual work and allowing team members to focus on higher-value analysis.

However, crucial guardrails were shared during the discussion, which highlighted the importance of understanding what goes into an AI model, much like checking the ingredients on a product label. Knowing the source and quality of the data behind a large language model is essential for compliance planning. The conversation also emphasized a common pitfall: many AI projects fail because teams can't clearly define the problem they're solving or lose focus along the way.

Start with approved tools that address specific, well-defined problems

Understand the data and limitations of your AI solutions

Communicate AI's constraints early and often to stakeholders

Use real examples, including failures, to build appropriate guardrails

Kristy Grant-Hart, Head of Compliance Advisory Services at Spark Compliance Consulting, a Diligent brand, shared her framework for compliance planning: "If your plan isn’t aligned with your board or leadership, you won’t share a vision of success. Even if you think you've succeeded, they may not agree, so get buy-in early and define what success looks like together."

This alignment challenge extends beyond goal setting to resource planning. Grant-Hart emphasized the point that compliance rarely works in isolation. You need IT, HR and legal to execute. If your project timelines don't also take into account and reflect their bandwidth, your plan just isn't realistic.

Secure upfront agreement on compliance priorities and success metrics

Account for interdependencies with other departments in your planning

Be prepared to reset expectations when business conditions change

Focus on achievable goals rather than unrealistic commitments

The key is flexibility combined with clear communication. When new risks emerge or business priorities shift, successful compliance leaders proactively realign expectations rather than delivering on outdated promises.

5. Integrate ethics and compliance systems

Modern compliance programs work best as integrated ecosystems, not collections of standalone tools. The summit's closing session emphasized that compliance is evolving. It's no longer defined by policies alone. It's about effective operations, thoughtful leadership and the ability to turn principles into action.

This integration extends to every aspect of compliance operations — from speak-up programs and policy management to training and monitoring systems. When these elements work together, they drive better adoption rates and provide clearer insights into program effectiveness.

Connected systems provide holistic views of compliance risks and trends

Integrated training and communication efforts reinforce consistent messaging

Unified reporting capabilities tell compelling stories about program effectiveness

Seamless workflows reduce friction and improve user adoption

The goal is creating a compliance ecosystem where each component reinforces and amplifies the others, rather than competing for attention and resources.

Third-party risk management goes beyond traditional due diligence. It requires challenging the fundamental business justification for each relationship. As a panelist in our supply chain integrity session reminded us, 90% of FCPA settlements involve third-party intermediaries, making this one of the highest-impact areas for compliance focus.

The discussion emphasized the importance of strong business partnerships in compliance, taking the time to engage with business teams, understand their models, operations and how they go to market is essential for building effective, aligned compliance strategies.

Challenge the business need for each third-party relationship

Embed compliance considerations into strategic decision-making processes

Apply risk-based approaches that match oversight to actual risk levels

Coordinate across departments to avoid duplicative or conflicting assessments

The most effective compliance programs don't just assess risk, they help the business make better strategic choices about which relationships to pursue in the first place.

6. Integrate ethics and compliance systems

As emphasized in the closing session, progress comes through action, not just good ideas or high aspirations, not perfection, but steady, practical, structured execution. The summit's insights provide a roadmap, but implementation requires deliberate, consistent effort.

The common thread across all these takeaways is the evolution of compliance from a reactive, checklist-driven function to a strategic business partner that drives value through coordination, resilience, innovation and planning. Success comes from embedding compliance thinking into the fabric of business operations rather than treating it as an external constraint.

Modern compliance leadership means being deliberate, collaborative and aligned with business needs while maintaining the highest standards of integrity and risk management.

Ready to implement these strategies in your organization?

Strengthening Compliance in Uncertain Times: Expert Guidance for the Road Ahead

, for detailed frameworks and practical tools that help compliance leaders navigate regulatory complexity while building programs that protect corporate integrity and drive business value.

From theory to action: Key insights from our Compliance in Action Virtual Summit

It’s no secret that organizational leaders depend on financial reports and having up-to-date data at their fingertips — especially in a volatile landscape shaped by escalating tariffs, shifting regulations and economic uncertainty. Yet too many financial teams still operate in yesterday’s world of disparate data sources and manual processes — and that’s a problem for many reasons.

Entering, compiling and checking information, then distilling what it means in a digestible fashion, takes too much time, diverting them from supporting leadership more fully as a strategic advisor. Manual processes open up the risk of human error — definitely not what an organization needs during a time-sensitive investment decision, the pressure-packed weeks before a transaction or a pivotal investor, city council or school board meeting.

Meanwhile, disconnected workflows across multiple systems impede big-picture visibility of risk and opportunities alike. Security often falls by the wayside (especially when sensitive financial data is shared over email), leaving information exposed to the very threats organizations are trying to avoid.

Automation rises to the challenge on all of these fronts and more.

Given these challenges, Diligent’s own Chief Accounting Officer, Adam Ginsberg, saw the potential in 

, an automated connection between essential ERP, professional services and human capital data from Oracle NetSuite and the Diligent One Platform, which surfaces it all as a visual dashboard in Diligent Boards.

Ginsberg and his team can deliver better operational and financial insights faster to board members, executives and investors. That fosters better governance by empowering leadership to make fully informed decisions. With Finance Reporting powered by NetSuite, he reported that his team saved 8-12 hours in financial reporting time each month.

“We can focus on analysis and the why, and less about validating the information is complete and accurate...It saves us time and enables us to provide better and more timely insights to directors and the board.” — Adam Ginsberg, Chief Accounting Officer, Diligent

Here’s how it works and how automation delivers multifaceted benefits to financial teams and the leaders they support:

3 proven ways automation streamlines financial reporting

For organizations with multiple departments and divisions like Diligent, one request for financial data unleashes a host of time-consuming steps:

Aggregating data across operations and subsidiaries

Verifying it all for accuracy and recency

Exporting these massive data sets into Excel for laborious manual analysis

Finally, curating and contextualizing it all for leadership, board and investors

When these requests add up, and when they’re time-sensitive and mission-critical, the financial team feels the pressure and risks falling behind.

Automation streamlines this process from start to finish, bringing ease and confidence to reporting and freeing up time for more value-added work.

“We can focus on analysis and the why, and less about validating the information is complete and accurate,” says Ginsberg. “It saves us time and enables us to provide better and more timely insights to directors and the board.”

Connect directly to NetSuite, visualizing essential ERP data within Diligent Boards to deliver better operational and financial insights to board members, executives and investors.

Control your financial reporting

Automation-powered reporting tools can also help teams provide a clear and consistent view of financial performance and risk.

In the case of Finance Reporting powered by NetSuite, financial data, along with operational metrics from NetSuite applications, surface directly in reporting templates designed by industry experts based on governance best practices. Leadership and the board then get this information directly and consistently via Diligent Boards.

“I don’t have to repull the data every single time,” says Ginsberg. “We can focus more on the analysis and the explanation of what happened, and less about validating the information is consistent with the last report and deciding how to present what happened.”

These capabilities have helped his team report metrics to leadership more proactively, and leaders make more fully informed decisions. Ginsberg uses the metric of days sales outstanding (DSO) as one example, which many companies report on frequently internally and to their boards.

“Being able to manage and track DSO allowed us to measure the success of our policy changes and operating plans and ensure we hit our goals,” he says.

Finally, bringing data, workflows and collaboration together into one integrated platform strengthens security. With traditional manual processes, communication and data-sharing take place across too many channels, many of them insecure. Teams risk exposing data to bad actors, losing it along the way or letting errors creep in.

Tools like Finance Reporting powered by NetSuite tackle these challenges head-on. Leveraging automation and integration, they give financial reporting teams a secure channel for aggregating, storing and sharing data — with the board, trusted outside consultants, regulators, shareholders and beyond.

Harness the power of automation for your financial reporting

More time for value-added work. More capacity to meet reporting demands, with accuracy and consistency built in. Sharper decision-making and stronger security. Automated financial reporting is the investment that pays off organization-wide today and into the future.

Download the case study to learn how the Diligent-NetSuite partnership improves efficiency, security and executive collaboration.

Automation: Bringing efficiency, accuracy and ROI to financial reporting 

AI is no longer the exclusive domain of tech giants. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), GenAI presents a powerful opportunity to drive efficiency, innovation, and smarter decision-making — without needing large-scale budgets or in-house data science teams.

To better understand how SMEs can unlock the potential of GenAI, Diligent Institute partnered with the Institute of Directors (IoD) to survey 60 UK-based directors. The result? A concise, actionable infographic that outlines the top challenges, opportunities, and best practices for integrating GenAI into your business strategy.

Whether you're just starting your AI journey or looking to scale your efforts, this visual guide offers a roadmap to responsible, effective adoption.

GenAI for small businesses: An infographic for smarter growth  

Poll finds boards struggling to navigate Washington

As tariffs, inflation and sourcing disruptions grow, a new poll finds America’s public-company boardrooms fighting to manage the moment. ‘You can't forecast anything.’

 in Q2, according to the most recent Director Confidence Index, conducted by Diligent Institute and Corporate Board Member, but that doesn’t mean America’s board members are breathing easy. Our latest polling finds the director community remains deeply concerned about the economic impact of the Trump administration’s policies, prompting new approaches to risk oversight in America’s boardrooms.

The extent of the impact from the current administration is extensive. Directors rate the current risk level for U.S. companies at 6.8 out of 10, on a scale where 1 is Negligible and 10 is Significant, with 81 percent of the 126 public company board members polled May 12-14 listing tariffs as the top business risk today.

Second on the list? A tie at 46 percent between two other Washington-created challenges: “supply chain / sourcing disruptions” and “inflation and currency fluctuations” (the survey asked directors to list their top three challenges). The third and fourth picks were D.C.-driven as well: geopolitics and regulatory changes.

“You can't forecast anything in this uncertain environment,” added Joseph R. Bronson, a director on the board of Nasdaq-traded PDF Solutions. “We're doing what we can to deal with this mess created by the White House.”

To cope, directors want to increase the frequency of their board’s strategy and risk conversations (42 percent) and making better use of new AI tools for real-time data and risk analysis (35 percent).

“These two answer options are inherently related,” says Dottie Schindlinger, Executive Director of the Diligent Institute and partner in this research. “As boards recognize the need for more frequent conversations about risk and strategy in the current environment, having access to the real-time data and analysis to support those conversations is crucial.”

Overall, 47 percent say they are engaging in scenario planning to help navigate the current environment—the most common tactic selected by those participating in the survey. Other approaches include diversifying supply chains, revising pricing models and strengthening financial reserves.

“While the highest tariffs keep getting kicked down the road 90-days, that's not a long enough interval for businesses to plan, and there is still no clear trade policy,” said one director.

Still, boards and their companies remain committed to pursuing growth as planned this year. Nearly half (48 percent) said their priority for the rest of the year remains growth—through M&A, new products and new markets. Slightly more than a third said their priority was risk mitigation, including reforecasting, scenario planning and diversification.

“More boards are realizing that uncertainty is the new norm and that many elements driving this uncertainty have been experienced in the past,” said Brian Kushner, who serves on the board of Resideo Technologies, adding: “Just not all at the same time.”

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From theory to action: Key insights from our Compliance in Action Virtual Summit

Automation: Bringing efficiency, accuracy and ROI to financial reporting

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