See How Global Enterprises Embed Compliance—Without Slowing Innovation

A global leader in market research needed a smarter way to stay compliant across regions—without slowing innovation. With Northern Light’s Compliance Engine, they scaled confidently, mitigated risk, and embedded compliance into every project workflow.

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The Problem

As a global organization conducting research across 13 countries, the client faced a tangle of evolving compliance requirements—each with its own rules, approvals, and documentation. Without a consistent framework, teams relied on manual processes to interpret and enforce regulations, creating delays and inconsistencies across markets.

With more than 1,500 projects and 10,000 documents per year, ensuring regulatory alignment and audit readiness at scale was overwhelming. Researchers spent valuable time navigating spreadsheets, email threads, and outdated guidance, while compliance teams struggled to keep pace with changing rules.

The stakes were high: missed steps could trigger legal exposure, brand risk, or stalled product timelines. Compliance bottlenecks were slowing innovation, not safeguarding it. The organization needed a smarter, automated way to embed compliance into every project—without burdening teams or compromising speed.

Client Objectives

Standardize and streamline compliance across all global research projects.

Reduce legal and financial exposure by enforcing regulatory adherence at scale.

Generate complete audit trails for every project, accessible on demand.

Empower compliance teams with built-in decision support and automation.

Update rules dynamically to reflect changing global regulatory landscapes.

What Northern Light Delivered

Configurable Compliance Engine

Delivered a dynamic engine tailored to each country’s specific rules, guiding research leads through a smart, branching questionnaire that adapts based on project details—ensuring only relevant compliance checks are triggered.

Instant Rule-Based Validation

Automatically compares answers against regulatory requirements and flags non-compliance in real time—so researchers know immediately if a project violates standards and how to adjust.

Auto-Generated Compliance Plans

Produces a customized Compliance Plan PDF for each project, outlining required steps, approvals, and handoffs (e.g., Pharmacovigilance review), which is then integrated into both the research portal and project management tool.

We help customers achieve measurable results

Compliance Plans centralized in the research portal and project tool—ensuring traceability and access across teams.

Machine learning analytics applied to project documents—automatically flagging compliance risks.

Audit logs maintained in exportable formats, supporting global compliance reporting and readiness.

Without Northern Light’s Compliance Engine, there is no way we could track our compliance performance across the 13 countries, 1,500 projects, and 10,000 market research documents we generate every year.

— Global Head of Market Research