Navigating the Landscape of Regulations with Regulatory Change Management Software

New technological developments and their associated threats are growing at a rate never seen before.

In response to these innovations, governments and regulatory bodies are constantly updating rules and laws. From the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the US to the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) in Japan, how could anyone possibly keep up?

Fortunately, there’s a solution to this problem: regulatory change management software.  

Some regulations are industry specific, serving industries such as healthcare or manufacturing, while others are more broad, such as those governing data security and privacy. The software outlines workflows to guide organizations in updating their policies to comply with regulatory changes.

Regulatory change management software is often part of a larger governance, risk & compliance platform or can integrate with other solutions to manage organizational policies, compliance, and auditing tasks.

Understanding the global regulatory landscape

We don’t have space here to do a comprehensive review of all the different regulations. Instead, let’s look at a few laws that reflect different types of regulations, such as the ones listed above. We’ll look at an example of a regional regulation, an industry-specific regulation, and a country-level regulation.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Enacted on May 25, 2018, the GDPR is arguably the most well-known privacy and security law in the world. While the law governs the EU, anyone in other parts of the world who does business with individuals located in the EU is held to this law. The GDPR addresses data protection principles, including data security and data protection “by design and by default”, consent, and accountability. Violators can face significant fines.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

This is an example of a law that regulates a specific industry in a specific location: healthcare in the United States. HIPAA is a national standard that protects individuals’ personally identifiable health information and their individual medical records. The law applies not only to traditional medical facilities such as hospitals and clinics but also to entities that manage health care plans and payments, such as health insurance companies and government organizations. HIPAA went into effect in April 2003.

Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI)

The APPI is sometimes thought of as the Japanese answer to the GDPR, but the focus of APPI is on how businesses and other organizations handle individuals’ data. The law protects individual data and requires consent for collecting certain types of sensitive data, but it does not go as far as the GDPR and some other laws that regulate consent for all types of personal information collection, not just information deemed sensitive. Any organization that collects information from Japanese citizens must comply with the law. The law was passed in 2003 and most recently updated in 2021.

Now that we’ve looked at a few examples of different types of regulatory frameworks, let’s see how software helps organizations stay in compliance with these regulations and adopt organizational policies to reflect new updates.

Exploring the regulatory change management software market

Products are added to G2 categories as new solutions come to the market or as vendors develop additional features to existing products. The number of products within the category has been growing at a modest but steady rate over the past 12 months.

The average star rating, on a scale of 1 to 5, across the Regulatory Change Management category is high—an impressive 4.5-star rating across 733 reviews.

The regulatory change management software landscape is stable and consistent. With high product ratings, there likely isn’t much demand for new solutions; the existing market is stable. 

When considering tools that assist with compliance and mitigating business risks, consumers expect a degree of certainty. A stable, unchanging marketplace conveys a sense of confidence, leaving the labor of risk to other elements.

Instead of spending valuable time and skilled labor executing changes, compliance experts can focus their efforts on aligning company policies to new regulations that advance the organization's mission. This suggests that this is a mature industry, and software buyers can feel confident in their purchasing options.

Regulatory change management software can often also perform additional functions. When we reference products in the Regulatory Change Management category, we can observe that some are listed in additional G2 categories, as seen below.

Unsurprisingly, many of the regulatory change management solutions can also support other various governance, risk, and compliance functionalities. There are several products that function as comprehensive GRC platforms, enabling software customers to avoid the challenges of managing multiple products and navigating integrations across multiple vendors.

Looking ahead

Innovation never stops, and neither do changes to regulations. Artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, is generating a lot of conversation on how to best regulate this fast-growing technology and all of the new products, capabilities, and threats that come with it.

One of the newest regulations to come out is The EU Artificial Intelligence Act. The EU AI Act classifies AI according to the level of risk and lays out responsibilities for developers of AI systems and those who use those systems in a professional capacity. This act just came into effect on August 1, 2024, and there is a six-month to three-year regulatory change management software that can help organizations that are based in or do business in the EU stay up to date with new provisions of the act as they come into effect.

Another AI regulation on the horizon is a regulatory framework or law in the United States. Organizations operating in or doing business with entities and individuals in the United States anticipate some form of AI regulation at the federal level.

The White House has published a blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights highlighting the primary concerns with the rise of AI and its associated risks. The blueprint covers topics such as safety, discrimination, and privacy concerns, along with how the AI Bill of Rights can supplement existing laws governing areas such as data privacy. For information on software that enables data privacy protections to stay in compliance with existing regulations and anything to come in the future, review G2’s Data Privacy categories.

These are just two examples of recent or upcoming developments in regulations with global reach and impact. And new developments won’t be limited to AI innovations; regulations around environmental sustainability, IT security, and more will continue to evolve. Regulatory change management software will help organizations stay on top of these changes so they can focus their efforts on other business-critical areas.

Learn more about some trends and predictions in governance, risk, and compliance!

Edited by Jigmee Bhutia