anecdotes: Accelerating Growth and Amplifying Customer Trust with Data-Driven Compliance

Leah Zuckerman VC Value CreationLeah Zuckerman

November 15, 2021 • 4 min read

Blog Series | Part 4 | Value Creation Founders’ Series

When you think about Compliance, what comes to mind? Perhaps, an archaic and manual process, endless screenshots, a time suck, maybe even something you dread. With technology advancing more and more each day, why has the compliance process lagged behind? I sat down with Yair Kuzitsov, Co-Founder and CEO at anecdotes to understand where we are in the world of compliance and how in fact, when done right, Compliance can be a major player in your company’s ability to scale and amplify customer trust. In our conversation we covered the current state of Compliance, where and how anecdotes came to be a game changer for companies Compliance processes and ability to scale and of course, how they have developed a data driven approach that not only automates Compliance, but also empowers Compliance leaders and makes the process a little more fun.

Let’s set the scene. Before we delved into how anecdotes is shaking up the Compliance space, I felt it important to understand how Compliance functions in most organizations. Yair shared that Compliance can be boiled down to two groups, those who see and treat Compliance as a burden and those who see it as a business enabler. Let’s elaborate.

  • The first group, those who view Compliance as a burden, don’t understand that Compliance can actually serve as a business accelerator. They treat each audit as a siloed project and waste endless time and resources.
  • On the flip side, the second group, those who see Compliance as a business enabler, see that there is much overlap between their different Compliance projects, but feel they do not have the technology needed to implement a comprehensive Compliance Program. They are left with doing the tedious manual work.
  • No matter which side you sit on, you are faced with a challenging and complex InfoSec reality.

So why then has compliance not kept up with other technological advancements, like cloud migration or other automation tools used in daily workflow? Yair attributes it to an ecosystem dependency. He elaborated, “it is impossible for a single company to make the decision that it wants to become advanced and adopt new technology.” Why is this the case? “Because there are many players in the Compliance ecosystem beyond the company themselves, such as the auditors, advisors, ect. If the others do not make the choice to advance as well, the company is stuck,” Yair shared.

In other words, in order for an industry to advance, a decision has to be made by all the players together. However, until today that hasn’t happened because there weren’t technological solutions that addressed the needs of all those players. Enter anecdotes, who play a part in changing that. Yair stated, “we are bringing a cloud solution that benefits all of the players.”  I asked Yair to share more about anecdotes and how they are revamping compliance.

Where does anecdotes fit in the compliance story? Tell us about how anecdotes came to be?

My Co-Founders and I all have first-hand experience from our previous positions in dealing with the burden that Compliance can be for fast growing companies. Our experience, combined with our background in fully automated cyber security solutions led us to identify the immediate need this ecosystem had for a technological solution.

That is when we founded anecdotes and developed the first Compliance OS–an infrastructure grade solution that addresses the needs of any company, in any industry, of any size, and with any level of complexity, and enables it to maintain and grow its Compliance Program.

How are you revamping the process of Compliance for organizations and how does this enable companies to scale? 

We have shifted Compliance to rely on data. Data is the foundation of the Compliance OS. On this foundation we’ve laid the building blocks that enable powerful capabilities such as automation and cross framework data mapping. This shift completely changes the Compliance journey of a company, making it smarter and more transparent.

In a typical company, a Compliance leader has to interact with dozens of stakeholders on a monthly basis. These interactions can result in hours of labor-intensive work, and understandably, stakeholders hate that. With anecdotes’ Compliance OS, the Compliance leader has visibility of all of the platforms that the stakeholders use and can work independently. The number of interactions between the Compliance leader and the stakeholders decreases dramatically and the ones that do take place are much more fruitful. This saves money, time, frustration, and resources for stakeholders all across the company.

You’ve developed an easy-to-use and aesthetically pleasing SaaS platform, can you share the vision behind the platform?

The fundamental change we’re making by utilizing data has many facets. One of them is making the Compliance process more intuitive, aesthetic-based, and enjoyable so that our Compliance heroes can focus on doing their work and position themselves as proactive value generators in the company.

What’s on the roadmap for anecdotes?

The Compliance OS contains three layers and each has a fascinating roadmap.

  • The Plugins Layer: We already have the highest number of plugins in the market and we will cover hundreds of new integrations—from both public and private clouds—in order to meet all our customers’ architectures.

  • Data Pool Layer: This layer will soon include advanced analysis and insights that help tell the story behind the data and ensure that the Compliance Program is effectively implemented at all times.

  • The Applications Layer:  Very soon, we will be releasing exciting new applications that leverage the data layer to streamline daily Compliance processes such as integrated risk management and user access review.

Yair and I ended by talking about one of the most, if not the most important player in the process of building an enterprise company, the customer.  A key part in the customer journey is trust.  When I asked Yair what his customers were saying about using anecdotes he shared that besides enjoying the platform and the fact that anecdotes has saved them money, valuable time and a lot of frustration, their customers use the anecdotes platform to gain trust with their customers and are in fact using it as a tool in their sales process. Once they share anecdotes, compliance concerns are gone.

Thank you to Yair for an awesome conversation and for sharing how anecdotes is redefining the foundation of the Compliance ecosystem by bringing a cloud-first mindset that will improve B2B processes for organizations.  It’s so fun connecting with our founders and showcasing their technologies that are changing the way companies operate and scale. Thanks for reading!

Leah Zuckerman VC Value Creation

Written by

Leah Zuckerman

Analyst, Value Creation

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