Small-and-Growing Firms Explore Connected Compliance at NAVEX ‘Demo Days’

From ad-hoc solutions to connected compliance

Small-business compliance leaders are flocking to NAVEX’s Demo Days webinar series, learning how the company’s connected compliance solutions address the age-old challenges of building a cohesive and impactful compliance program within a growing firm. 

Having kicked off with a demonstration of the NAVEX One connected compliance platform on September 2, the series seeks to give smaller organizations accessible and practical guidance to holistically achieve varied ethics and compliance goals. With recent NAVEX survey data showing many small-and-growing businesses relying on ad-hoc compliance processes, a connected compliance platform such as NAVEX One may be key to enabling the ability to focus less on keeping up and more on getting ahead. 

“NAVEX One lets me start thinking about them as part of the same program,” said Drew Lyons, a NAVEX solutions engineer and speaker for the September 2 webinar. 

Small organizations, big compliance challenges 

Just because an organization is on the smaller end of the spectrum does not mean it is immune from the same kind of complex compliance challenges as its larger peers. Indeed, 60% of surveyed risk and compliance leaders from organizations with fewer than 2,500 employees said they had experienced at least one compliance issue in the past two years, according to data behind the 2026 NAVEX State of Risk & Compliance Report.  Sixty-nine percent of leaders from firms with 10,000 or more employees said the same. 

These continued challenges come as 38% of leaders from both smaller and enterprise organizations said their compliance programs are struggling to do more without additional resources. In these and other comparisons, a picture emerges where smaller-organization compliance has more in common with larger firms than might appear at first glance – and face many of the same issues. 

As organizations across the size spectrum face similar compliance hurdles, there appears to be positive momentum expected for small-and-growing firms. Thirty-eight percent of smaller-organization compliance programs were expected to increase their budgets by 10% or more in the coming year, compared to 27% of larger enterprises.  

Where do smaller organizations hope to use that investment for maximum impact? Fifty-four percent of smaller-firm compliance leaders said “modernizing technology/analytics” would be needed to significantly improve their organization’s ethics and compliance program over the next 12 months – the most frequently selected among several options. With 45% separately selecting “enhancing cross-functional collaboration,” signs seem to point to value in connected compliance solutions. 

Small-and-growing organizations were likely to use specialized technology for at least some aspects of compliance and risk management – only 11% were said they did not. Yet important individual elements still fell short. Only half (49%) used such technology for hotline and incident management, 40% for policy management and 48% for ethics and compliance training. 

For smaller organizations, this may present an opportunity. By allocating expected resource increases to more sophisticated program elements and transitioning away from ad hoc manual compliance processes, it may be possible to quickly mature the program and achieve greater impact for the organization. 

Finding a solution with NAVEX 

Too often, small businesses manage compliance through tools like spreadsheets, shared inboxes, documents and simply verbal conversations and norms. These approaches may suffice in the short term, but as the organization grows and seeks to optimize its operations, they quickly become harder to manage and defend. 

“Most organizations don’t have a lack of compliance tools. What they often have is a lack of connection between those tools,” Lyons said. “When those systems operate independently, that’s when compliance teams are left to connect the dots themselves.” 

What’s more, these systems may not share information across different compliance activities, making it more difficult to see how the program is doing at a glance and requiring small-organization compliance leaders – often who wear many hats – to devote precious bandwidth to administrative tasks.  

Not surprisingly, at the September 2 webinar, 66% of respondents to a live poll said “managing multiple systems” was the one “compliance headache” they would choose to eliminate today.  

Operating through a connected approach not only simplifies management of those different compliance processes, but also provides visibility into the compliance program’s health as a whole, Lyons said. 

“NAVEX One isn’t simply about putting more products under one roof. It’s about creating a connected compliance program,” he said.

How NAVEX can help

In recognition of that need, NAVEX, the global leader in integrated risk and compliance management software, offers NAVEX One Compliance Essentials. The package brings whistleblowing and incident management, policy management, and compliance training together in the connected and centralized platform of NAVEX One, giving growing businesses an easier way to manage core compliance needs, reduce manual work and build a program that can scale with the organization. Plus, businesses can save 30% when they bundle these essential compliance solutions. 

For smaller firms, this connected approach does not require implementing everything at once – organizations can start with the most immediate need and add capabilities as their programs develop. 

High on that list of priorities is internal reporting, the subject of the second NAVEX Demo Days webinar on September 9.  

Organizations that lack a cohesive internal reporting and case management system face a high likelihood of disorganized processes. Concerns arrive through managers, email, verbal conversations and spreadsheets, without one consistent intake and follow-up process. Reporter trust can suffer, with less confidence in the ability to make an anonymous report. 

In fact, only 55% of firms with fewer than 2,500 employees have an anonymous internal reporting channel at all, according to the 2026 NAVEX survey.  

With NAVEX One EthicsPoint intake and case management, employees benefit from trusted, clear channels, and administrators benefit from one structured place to assign, investigate, document and resolve cases. For smaller organizations, this provides much-appreciated efficiency and enhances the ability to analyze and report on program activities as the organization grows in size and complexity.