Policy Management Software is a specialized tool used by organizations to create, communicate, and manage their policies and procedures. It provides comprehensive solutions for documenting policies, automatic updates, tracking changes, and ensuring compliance with both internal regulations and external regulatory bodies. The software makes it easy to distribute new policies and updates, monitor receipt and understanding by employees, and document compliance. As a centralized repository, policy management software reduces risks, improves operational efficiency and promotes transparency and consistency within an organization.
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The 10 Best Policy Management Software Tools
The 10 Best Policy Management Software Tools provide critical functions, such as policy creation, distribution, tracking, and management, facilitating efficient compliance and risk management for businesses.
Table of Contents
In today’s world, where complexity in managing regulations and policies continues to grow exponentially, businesses have a pressing need for efficient policy management software tools. Navigating through the myriad of options available can be a daunting task. This blog post aims to simplify that task, providing insights on the 10 best policy management software tools to streamline adherence to your company’s policies, enforce compliance and ultimately mitigate risks. Whether you’re a small business owner or lead a sprawling multinational corporation, this guide can help you make informed decisions about the most suitable software to manage your company’s policies effectively.
What Is A Policy Management Software?
Policy Management Software: Our Recommendations
Pick #1
PowerDMS
PowerDMS is a robust policy management software that offers businesses an efficient way to organize, manage, and track their policies, procedures, and important documents in one centralized, accessible location. This cloud-based platform simplifies the complex task of distributing vital information to employees, monitoring their acknowledgment, tracking policy versions, and ensuring compliance with necessary regulations. It provides companies with the tools needed to quickly adapt to changing regulations, guarantees timely training of staff, and reduces the risk of non-compliance. It also assists in demonstrating transparency during audits by maintaining a detailed history of policy edits and read receipts.
Centralized Document Management: PowerDMS provides a consolidated platform for managing all policies and documents. It helps in organizing and locating important documents more effectively.
Workflow Efficiency: PowerDMS also facilitates pre-defined workflows allowing for smoother collaboration for policy creations, revisions, and approvals. It eliminates manual procedures, which can be time-consuming and error-prone.
Compliance Tracking: PowerDMS enables users to track and report compliance with various regulations in real-time. It ensures that organizations are always audit-ready and compliant with the latest standards.
Automated Signatures and Acknowledgments: It has a feature to collect digital signatures and acknowledgments from employees, which confirms that they have read and understand the updated policies. It helps in maintaining a record of those confirmations.
Customizable Testing and Training: PowerDMS has an integrated testing and training platform. Businesses can customize the training tools to help employees learn new policies and verify their understanding through automated testing.
Difficulty in navigating the user interface. PowerDMS users report challenges in navigating through the interface. It may need more streamlining and simplifying for better user experience, especially for personnel who are not too tech-savvy.
Limited integration capabilities. PowerDMS doesn't always offer smooth integration with other software systems. This can lead to inconveniences when a company uses several different software tools.
Inflexible customization options. While PowerDMS has a great set of features, it gets a bit restrictive when it comes to personalizing the tool to suit specific business needs. This can limit the software's fit into unique or changing business models.
Learning curve. PowerDMS's features and functionalities may be complicated to new users and it requires time investment to become proficient in it. This could lead to operational delays.
Limited formatting options. When uploading or creating content, PowerDMS offers limited options in terms of formatting. The rigidity with respect to document layouts can be a disadvantage for organizations needing more flexibility and creativity in their policy documents.
Pick #2
Process Street
Process Street is a policy management software that provides businesses and organizations with an intuitive and streamlined platform for creating, storing, and executing process documentation, policies, and procedures. Through this platform, users can create rich process documents featuring images, videos, and various form fields that standardize task completion and workflow execution. It streamlines internal processes, ensuring standardized operating procedures and compliance. The software also allows for process revisions, progress tracking, and collaboration through sharing permissions and notifications, making it an all-encompassing tool for streamlined and efficient policy management.
Process Street excels in providing structure to workflows, procedures, and policies. It can easily organize and document all your company policies for improved compliance and accountability.
Process Street's policy management software helps with task assignment and tracking, allowing administrators to delegate tasks related to policy management to specific individuals or teams, thereby ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
The platform provides seamless integration with other software tools such as Google Drive and Dropbox, making it easier to incorporate existing policy documents or generate new ones within the system.
The robust workflow features provided by the software, such as checklists or conditional logic, can automate parts of the policy creation and management process, making the overall process more efficient.
Process Street's software facilitates real-time collaboration, providing policymakers the ability to work together on policy development and review. It also has excellent tracking of changes and approvals, ensuring transparency and clarity in your policy management process.
Lack of Offline Capabilities: Process Street is a cloud-based platform and does not offer offline capabilities, which makes it difficult to work when no internet is available or connection is unstable.
No Process Simulation: Process Street does not have a feature that simulates the business processes for analysis and improvement, which is usually integral to policy management.
Limited Integration: While Process Street can be integrated with some tools, its integration capabilities are limited, which may become a hindrance because organisations often have a range of software tools they need to operate concurrently.
Less Flexibility: Process Street is heavily structured and it confines teams to act within the designed procedures. Some users find it less flexible when they need to adapt to different or emergent steps.
Complexity: While Process Street is very powerful, it has a steep learning curve. Learning how to use it effectively for policy management and understanding its varied functions can be challenging for some users.
Pick #3
MetaCompliance
MetaCompliance is a leading policy management software designed to simplify and streamline the intricate process of creating, communicating, and managing policies and procedures within an organization. It facilitates effective compliance with regulatory standards by reinforcing policy adherence, enhancing policy visibility, monitoring policy understanding, and providing substantial audit trails. It also features tools like automated policy distribution, role-based targeted communication, and user acknowledgement for the verification of policy understanding, improving accountability and transparency in the organization’s compliance efforts.
User Engagement through Gamification: MetaCompliance Policy Management Software helps organizations educate their employees through innovative and interactive ways. The platform uses gamification strategies such as quizzes, interactive games, and animations to increase user engagement and improve understanding of compliance policies.
Streamlined Policy Lifecycle: The software provides an end-to-end solution for policy management that includes policy creation, distribution, tracking and reporting. It gives a structured approach to manage policy documentation in an organized manner, providing a consolidated view of all the information in one place.
Advanced Reporting & Compliance Analytics: MetaCompliance provides real-time dashboards, aiding companies in tracking and monitoring their policy understanding and comprehension among employees. Furthermore, it offers advanced reporting functionality, providing a view of overall compliance with policies and serving as evidence for auditors.
Automated Acknowledgement Reminders: MetaCompliance automates the process of sending out policy acknowledgements, reminders and policy read confirmations. This ensures users are informed about new policies or updates in a timely manner, promoting higher compliance adherence.
Multi-Language Support: MetaCompliance Policy Management software supports multiple languages, enabling global organizations to distribute and manage their policies effectively across diverse geographical regions and cultural settings.
MetaCompliance as policy management software can sometimes present challenges in terms of customization. It is not always flexible enough to accommodate unique processes, especially for larger companies with more complex policy management needs.
It may take time for users to get used to its interface and functionalities. The learning curve is observed to be quite steep for non-technically inclined users, resulting in slow adoption across an organization.
The dashboard of MetaCompliance, while comprehensive, can sometimes be overwhelming. The large amount of information displayed can confuse users, impacting their efficiency in managing policies.
The reporting features in MetaCompliance could be improved. The current tools and options for generating reports seem to be not quite comprehensive, leading to limitations when it comes to gaining insights and analytics from the data.
Customer service response times have also been flagged as an issue by some users. The time taken to resolve the issues or to get a response is reported to be sometimes longer than expected. This could majorly impact businesses where time is of high importance.
Pick #4
Netwrix Auditor
Netwrix Auditor is a visibility platform for user behavior analysis and risk mitigation that allows organizations to enhance their security policies and simplify regulatory compliance. As a policy management software, it delivers comprehensive insights into activities across multiple systems and offers real-time alerts on auditable actions, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential security threats. With its powerful IT auditing capabilities, the tool efficiently uncovers anomalous behavior, allows policy enforcement, and creates thorough reports which aid in efficiently managing and ensuring the organization’s compliance with internal and external policies.
Real-Time Alerts: The Netwrix Auditor delivers timely, detailed alerts about vital changes, detected threats, and inconsistencies in policy management. It provides the ability to understand and react quickly to the information.
Integrated Compliance Reports: Netwrix Auditor has built-in compliance reports that are mapped to specific regulatory standards such as GDPR, PCI DSS, and HIPAA. This helps to maintain a high level of compliance and it simplifies preparing for external audits.
Advanced Search Capabilities: The software offers Google-like search to sift through tons of audit data quickly and accurately. It allows the user to look up specific changes, logins, or activities with ease.
Comprehensive Visibility: Netwrix Auditor offers 360-degree visibility into user activity, system configurations, and data sensitivity. This aids the organization in understanding how their policies are being implemented and influencing activity within the system.
State-In-Time Reports: Netwrix Auditor provides detailed state-in-time reports that show specific configurations at any point in the past. This can be very useful in investigatory scenarios or for periodic reviews of policy enforcement.
Limited Policy Management Functions - While Netwrix Auditor is great for network security and data auditing, it lacks in-depth policy management functions that some specialized policy management software solutions have.
Complexity in Setup and Usage - Netwrix Auditor has a complex interface that may not be user-friendly for beginners or non-IT professionals. The software requires a certain degree of technical expertise to effectively set up and use.
Limited Integration - As a primarily auditing-focused software, Netwrix Auditor may not integrate well with other policy management tools or software suites. This lack of integration can lead to inefficiencies and potential gaps in policy execution and monitoring.
Lack of Customization Options - Netwrix Auditor has limited flexibility and customization options in terms of policy management. For instance, you may be unable to create custom policies or modify preset policies to a large extent.
No built-in Policy Creation Ability - Netwrix Auditor is mainly a monitoring and auditing tool, and as such, it doesn't allow for the creation of policies within the system. This means that companies using this tool would need another solution for policy creation.
Pick #5
OnBoard
OnBoard is a comprehensive, cloud-based policy management software designed to streamline and automate the process of managing, revising, and distributing important business policies and procedures. It serves as a centralized platform that aids organizations with their compliance efforts, allows for easy tracking of policy changes, enhances internal auditing processes, and facilitates effective communication through real-time updates. Its user-friendly interface helps users to create, review, approve, and share policies with the assurance that everyone has access to the most current documentation. Its additional features include granular-level permissions, automated reviews and approvals, reporting and analytics, ensuring efficient and transparent governance within an organization.
Streamlined Policy Creation and Approval: With OnBoard, organizations can create, review, and update policies more efficiently. Its workflow tools facilitate the drafting, editing, and approval process, ensuring that policies do not get stuck in bureaucratic red-tape.
Consolidated Policy Repository: OnBoard provides a centralized location where all organizational policies can be stored and easily accessed. This simplifies policy search and retrieval, making it easier for all users to find the information they need.
Automated Policy Renewal Reminders: OnBoard's policy management software has capabilities for setting reminders for policy renewals. This helps to ensure about compliance and reduce the risk of policies lapsing or becoming outdated.
Detailed Board Meeting Minutes: OnBoard enables a seamless integration of policy decisions into board meeting minutes. The information can be updated in real time and accessed later, helping in the transparency and accountability process.
Robust Compliance Tools: OnBoard assists in adhering to regulatory frameworks as it tracks changes, captures approvals, and maintains a complete audit trail. It also provides functionalities to demonstrate proof of policy compliance, making it a valuable tool during external audits or internal reviews.
OnBoard, as a Policy Management Software, does not have dedicated functionality for policy creation, revision, and implementation management.
It does not offer or support policy mapping and modeling which is crucial for easier visualization and tracking of the different policies in any organization.
OnBoard lacks a dedicated regulatory compliance management feature that can be crucial for businesses operating in highly regulated environments.
It doesn't have an inbuilt electronic signature feature, making it less effective when approval and signing off policies are required.
OnBoard does not provide an integrated risk management feature for measuring the relevant risks associated with different policies.
Pick #6
ConvergePoint Policy Management Software
ConvergePoint Policy Management Software is a comprehensive, enterprise-level solution designed to manage the complete lifecycle of corporate policies and procedures. Built on Microsoft SharePoint, ConvergePoint allows organizations to streamline their policy management processes from creation to distribution, acceptance tracking and renewal. It is highly customizable, permits automation of processes, and supports regulatory compliance. Its features include advanced search options, flexible workflow capabilities, audit trails, and robust reporting functions, making it a robust platform for policy management.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: ConvergePoint Policy Management Software enables the management of each policy from its creation to dissemination, acceptance, review, revision, and archiving. This mitigates risks associated with out-of-date and non-compliant policies.
Automation Features: The automation features of the ConvergePoint software relieve the administrative burden of drafting, reviewing and approving policies. It offers automatic reminder notifications and overdue escalations that ensure timely completion of tasks.
Integration with Microsoft SharePoint: ConvergePoint Policy Management Software is built on Microsoft SharePoint, providing seamless integration with an organization's existing SharePoint sites and enabling the consistency of data through a standard platform.
Advanced Reporting Capabilities: The software offers robust tracking and reporting capabilities that provide transparency into the policy management process. Users can track policy status, review, and approval stages, as well as generate detailed compliance reports.
Customizable Workflows: ConvergePoint allows customization of workflows according to an organization's specific policy management process. This not only increases efficiency but also ensures that the organization’s unique requirements and processes are fully catered to.
ConvergePoint Policy Management Software, despite its comprehensive features, tends to feel clunky and not as intuitive or user-friendly as some of the other policy management platforms.
The software currently only integrates with the Microsoft SharePoint platform, which can limit its usability within organizations that do not utilize SharePoint.
The procedure to configure workflows can be complicated and require the assistance of technically savvy personnel, which could lead to a longer setup time and hinder the quick uptake of the software within an organization.
Users have reported issues with ease of search and organization of documents within the system, which could lead to difficult navigation and time inefficiency.
The customer support from ConvergePoint can sometimes be slow or unresponsive, creating issues for organizations when a problem arises and needs to be addressed promptly.
Pick #7
NAVEX Global PolicyTech
NAVEX Global’s PolicyTech is a robust, scalable policy management software designed to simplify and streamline an organization’s policy and procedure management. It goes beyond basic storage functionalities as it offers an advanced suite of services such as automated policy distribution, acknowledgment tracking, robust reporting and audit trails. Its capabilities extend from creating, reviewing, revising, to tracking the access history of policies, which immensely enhances internal policy compliance. PolicyTech integrates with other systems allowing for a more pervasive and consistent implementation. This policy management solution provides a centralized and accessible platform tailored to reduce risk, improve efficiency, and promote compliance across large and storied organizations.
Simplified Policy Lifecycle Management: NAVEX Global's PolicyTech centralizes all policies ensuring they can be swiftly located, accessed, and managed with ease. This software also automates policy management, making revisions, approvals, and distribution more efficient.
Risk Mitigation: Automated policy and procedure management helps to mitigate risks by ensuring that the organization's documentation is up-to-date and employees are trained on the latest policy updates.
Regulatory Compliance: NAVEX Global's PolicyTech provides a sound way to demonstrate policy procedure to regulatory bodies. This software includes features to track revisions, approvals and ensure staff are familiar with current policies – all crucial for showing regulators your compliance efforts.
Unified User Experience: The software provides a single place where employees access and acknowledge policies. This unified experience furthers uniformity and simplicity for users by offering a consistent interface.
Comprehensive Reporting and Analytics: PolicyTech provides comprehensive reporting capabilities and analytics. This allows organizations to track and monitor policy performance and compliance, thus enabling them to make informed decisions and adjustments when necessary.
Cluttered User Interface: NAVEX Global PolicyTech's user interface could be more user-friendly. Its complex structure can make navigation difficult for some users, particularly those who are less tech-savvy.
Lack of Intuitive Search Functionality: The search tool is often described as unintuitive, often requiring users to know exact policy names or specific details to locate the document they're looking for.
Limited Customization: The ability to personalize and customize certain aspects of the software is limited, which can prevent organizations from tailoring the platform to their specific needs.
Difficulty in Version Control: Users have reported issues with version control and it can be difficult to keep track of policy changes and updates.
Inflexibility in Report Formatting: The system's inflexibility with report customization and formatting poses inconvenience and challenges for users wanting to generate specific types of reports.
Pick #8
ComplianceBridge
ComplianceBridge is a comprehensive policy management software designed to assist organizations in maintaining compliance by tracking and managing company policies, procedures, and regulations. It enables businesses to author, review, approve, and distribute important documentation, while providing a consolidated platform to conduct audits and risk assessments. Additional features include version control, automatic notifications, detailed reports, and customizable workflow processes, all working together to reduce risk, improve efficiency, and ensure every aspect of your organization adheres to the appropriate standards and regulations.
Comprehensive Auditing: ComplianceBridge allows users to conduct thorough audits by tracking and storing all document revisions and updates. This ensures no changes go unnoticed and aids in maintaining compliance.
User-Friendly Interface: ComplianceBridge offers an intuitive, user-friendly dashboard, which ensures a smooth user experience for all employees regardless of their tech skills. It facilitates easy document management and updates.
Streamlined Policy Distribution: ComplianceBridge also eases the process of policy dissemination by enabling system admins to distribute policies directly to the relevant individuals or groups, thus increasing efficiency and ensuring everyone receives the necessary updates.
Read and Acknowledge feature: This software has a read-and-acknowledge feature that allows administrators to request readers to confirm that they have read and understood a policy. This feature complies with best practice for policy management and accountability.
Robust Reporting Tools: ComplianceBridge provides robust reporting tools that allows managers to monitor compliance rates, outstanding acknowledgements, and past-due requirements. This level of document tracking can help ensure that an organisation is maintaining a high level of compliance.
Limited Functionality: Compared to some other platforms, ComplianceBridge's Policy Management Software can be somewhat limited in terms of the customization and functions it offers. Users may find that they may not be able to tailor the software to their specific needs.
User Interface: Some users may find the interface of ComplianceBridge less intuitive compared to other policy management software. The aesthetics are not as polished as others and navigating the user interface can be challenging for non-technical users.
Integration: ComplianceBridge does not seamlessly integrate with all systems and software applications. This can make it more difficult for organizations with diverse software ecosystems to implement.
Limited Technical Support: Based on the feedback from various users, ComplianceBridge has limited technical support. This makes it difficult for users to resolve issues that they may experience while using the software.
Slow Updates and Adaptability: The software doesn't adapt or update as frequently as some of the other policy management software platforms. This can cause issues when dealing with fast-paced regulatory changes where frequent updates are required.
Pick #9
iGrafx
iGrafx is a leading policy management software designed to help organizations centralize, manage and communicate policies to ensure regulatory compliance and risk mitigation. It is a robust platform that provides an integrated solution for process modeling, risk management, and business process management. iGrafx supports the full policy management lifecycle, from policy creation, review, approval, distribution to policy acknowledgment tracking. Additionally, it offers advanced features such as version control, audit trails, and automated workflows. These functionalities make iGrafx an essential tool for businesses to align their operational efficiency with strategic objectives while ensuring adherence to various global regulatory standards.
Visual Process Mapping and Analysis: iGrafx provides a visual interface for creating and modifying policy procedures. This assists in understanding and communicating policy processes, their workflows, and their interdependencies effectively, thereby enhancing transparency and coherence across the whole organization.
Risk and Compliance Management: iGrafx offers integrated risk assessment tools that enable organizations to identify policy-related risks, measure their potential impact, and manage them accordingly. It also helps ensure compliance with regulations and standards by linking policies directly to regulatory requirements.
Comprehensive Reporting and Auditing: iGrafx provides powerful reporting and auditing features, giving stakeholders insights into policy performance. It allows tracking policy changes over time, enabling management to perform detailed reviews and maintain a secure audit trail.
Collaboration and Policy Sharing: iGrafx promotes collaboration among different teams through a central repository, where policies can be stored, shared, and updated. This unified platform supports cross-functional collaboration and consistent governance, helping to reduce policy-related miscommunication and misunderstandings.
Process and Performance Metrics: iGrafx's process performance metrics feature provides the ability to associate metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) with each policy process, giving organizations a clear view of how well they are performing relative to their policy goals. It aids in tracking policy performance and making data-driven improvements.
Limited flexibility: iGrafx as a policy management tool lacks flexibility. It is difficult to customize and adjust according to unique company policy needs.
Lack of scalability: iGrafx does not scale very well. For larger organizations with complex policy management needs, it might not be the best choice.
Overly complicated interface: Using iGrafx for policy management, can be unintuitive, especially for those without a strong tech background. Some users find the software to be overly complicated, which might hinder productivity and usability.
Lack of integrations: iGrafx doesn't integrate well with other tools. This can lead to inefficiencies because it can't pull data from other software directly and lack of interoperation with other systems can be an obstacle.
Poor reporting capabilities: iGrafx's reporting capabilities are quite limited when it comes to policy management. This may make it difficult to generate meaningful insights from policies or track adherence throughout the organization.
Pick #10
DynamicPolicy
DynamicPolicy is a policy management software that helps organizations automate, streamline and continually improve their policy and procedure management lifecycle. It provides an effective way to create, distribute, and track policies, ensuring compliance with industry regulations. It offers features including policy creation and revision tools, document control, workflow automation, and comprehensive reporting. Furthermore, it facilitates collaboration among team members, provides version control, and tracks acknowledgment of policy updates, thereby enhancing transparency and accountability within organizations.
Complete Policy Lifecycle Management: DynamicPolicy caters to all policy management requirements starting from policy creation, review to approval and distribution. Its advanced workflow ensures efficient policy operability.
Comprehensive Document Control: The software provides robust document control features. You can monitor when a policy is created, modified, or revoked, who has accessed it, and even enforce mandatory reading for certain users.
Advanced Search Functionality: DynamicPolicy offers an enhanced search feature that allows users to quickly find the policies they need. The user can even use search filters like department, category, or keywords to streamline the policy locating process.
Easy Audit Trail: It gives a comprehensive audit trail on all policy documents. You can provide auditors with detailed, real-time reports on any revisions or access history easily, which aids in maintaining regulatory compliance.
Customizable Platform: DynamicPolicy offers a highly customizable platform. You can brand it according to your organization's identity, define user roles and access permissions, set alert rules, and tailor the software's functions to suit your unique policy management requirements.
Search Function Limitation: The search function in DynamicPolicy can sometimes be deemed limiting as it requires accurate keywords to find relevant policy and procedure documentation. This can be challenging if users are unsure of the exact terms used within a policy document.
Interface Complexity: While DynamicPolicy has a robust feature set, the user interface can be daunting for first-time users. The complexity of the system necessitates a higher learning curve that could affect productivity and efficiency in the initial stages of use.
Restricted Customization: The customization options in DynamicPolicy might not be adequate enough for some organizations with unique policy management needs. These restrictions limit how much an organization can tailor the software to fit their specific requirements.
Lack of Offline Access: DynamicPolicy does not provide offline access to the implemented policies and procedures. This may result in accessibility issues, particularly in situations of Internet downtime or for users located in remote areas with weak online connectivity.
Compatibility Issues: DynamicPolicy might not be compatible with all existing systems and workflows in an organization. This requires additional time and effort to implement workarounds, augment the existing system, or upskill the team to adapt to the new software.
Conclusion
In the modern digital era, leveraging policy management software tools becomes crucial for businesses of all sizes to streamline, automate, and regulate their policy-related procedures. Whether it’s ensuring compliance with international standards, effective collaboration among teams, faster approval processes, or maintaining audit trails, the ten best policy management software tools we reviewed bring unique, sophisticated features to the table. Each software has its strengths and choosing the right one depends entirely on your business needs, budget, and the complexity of your policies. With the right tool at hand, managing policies can become less daunting, more structured, and significantly more efficient.
FAQs
What is policy management software?
Policy management software is a tool that helps organizations streamline and control their policy management lifecycle. This includes creation, review, approval, distribution, and tracking of all company policies.
Why is policy management software important?
Policy management software is important because it ensures that all employees are aware of and follow the company's policies. It helps improve compliance, reduces the risk of legal issues, and promotes a safe and ethical working environment.
What are the key features of a policy management software?
Some key features include policy creation and editing tools, policy distribution capabilities, tracking and reporting features, and an intuitive user interface. Additionally, a good policy management software would have a search function for easy access to various policies.
Can policy management software support multiple languages?
Yes, many policy management software solutions have multilingual support. This means they can translate and facilitate the policy in multiple languages, helping companies with a diverse workforce or with offices in multiple countries.
Is policy management software secure?
Yes, a high-quality policy management software should have robust security measures in place to protect sensitive information. This includes data encryption, access controls, and regular security updates.