Given the economic uncertainty we are facing, with daily talks about a possible recession, budget cuts or freezes, it is important to consider alternative approaches and plans to drive growth and relevance in uncertain times.  

Several recent conversations across the industry have centered around how the industry would be impacted by a recession – which led us to share our perspective on this question, and possible steps we would take to encourage our clients and their customers to consider in the future.  

While compliance programs generate returns which are multiple times their spend (industry average would say 8X to 10X), they remain constrained by capital and human resources, as well as the challenge of adapting to the company’s strategic directions such as the migration to subscription or cloud or other strategic initiatives that compete with traditional compliance value propositions.  

As we approach a potential recession and businesses begin tightening the purse strings, compliance teams will face further challenges in maintaining resources, be they internal or external, and driving further investment in the business. By beginning to re-position their teams today, compliance leaders can not only weather the storm, but have a meaningful impact across their organizations.  

Key tips to adapt your compliance program

1. Expand your go-to-market strategy:

Many compliance teams have traditionally heavily focused on anti-piracy engagements leveraging call home data to address known piracy. For these organizations, we would highly encourage you to consider expanding your strategy to include:

• An audit initiative – focused beyond piracy with varied strategies for:
  • Prior infringers
  • Mid-Market
  • SMB
• Advisory:
  • Targeted strategies to help your largest customers, who have previously had piracy issues to drive compliance and maximize ROI
  • Helping your top customers transition to new business models by partnering with customer success and sales.
• Programs that have traditionally focused on audits of their larger customers have the opportunity to similarly expand their strategies to:
  • Engagements across the Mid-Market and SMB
  • Self-Certification Programs
  • Advisory
    • Developing advisory programs to encourage customers to proactively manage their compliance risks
    • Developing advisory programs aligned to the company strategy – supporting migration initiatives

With the advancement in digital engagement tools, rolling out initiatives beyond audit to self-declaration has opened opportunities to drive return across the SMB and Mid-Market customer base that were previously cost prohibitive to engage.

       2.  Partner Enablement  

Channel teams and partners are consistently innovating and looking for new programs to drive adoption and revenue. Today, we are working with several compliance teams to create partner engagement models that pair auditors with local channel partners to drive more positive revenue generation events via more customer centric advisory services .

      3.  Funding

With the anticipation of internal funding being tight for many of our clients, we are establishing a partnership with an investment bank to help our clients fund incremental growth with the returns being shared with the investment bank.  Funding options for new initiatives creatively support growth outside traditional budget models.

Connor, your partner for success

If you would like to learn more about how we can help you transform your compliance program into a more recession proof program with broader opportunities for your team, schedule an appointment with us today by reaching out at slc@connor-consulting.com. 

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