Transforming Pharma Compliance: Achieving Unified Audit-Ready Controls with REDE and ServiceNow

Pharmaceutical companies face complex compliance challenges. Multiple business units often operate with fragmented controls, making it difficult to maintain a clear, audit-ready posture. This fragmentation increases the risk of errors, slows down audit cycles, and demands excessive manual effort. A global pharma client recently overcame these hurdles by partnering with REDE’s domain specialists and using ServiceNow models to unify their compliance controls. Their journey offers valuable lessons for organizations aiming to improve compliance efficiency and reduce risk.

Unified compliance controls in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant

Mapping Policies to Controls Across Business Units

The first step in transforming compliance was to create a clear connection between policies and controls. The client operated across multiple locations including Ohio, Pune, Ahmedabad, the UK, and France. Each unit had its own set of controls, often overlapping or inconsistent. This made it difficult to track compliance and prepare for audits.

REDE’s domain specialists worked closely with the client to map existing policies to controls in every business unit. This process involved:

• Reviewing all relevant compliance policies and regulations

• Identifying control gaps and overlaps

• Aligning controls with specific policy requirements

• Documenting the control framework in a centralized system

  
  

This mapping created a single source of truth for compliance controls, enabling better visibility and management. It also laid the foundation for automation and continuous monitoring.

Automating Key Controls to Reduce Manual Evidence Collection

Manual evidence collection is time-consuming and prone to errors. The client’s compliance teams spent significant hours gathering documents, logs, and reports for audits. To address this, REDE and ServiceNow introduced automation for key controls.

Automation included:

• Integrating control data sources with ServiceNow workflows

• Automatically collecting and storing evidence such as system logs and process records

• Setting up alerts for control failures or exceptions

• Generating audit-ready reports on demand

  
  

This approach reduced manual work by 40%, freeing compliance staff to focus on analysis and improvement rather than data gathering. It also improved accuracy and timeliness of evidence, which is critical during audits.

Enabling Continuous Monitoring for Audit Readiness

Compliance is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. The client needed a way to continuously monitor controls and maintain audit readiness. REDE implemented continuous monitoring capabilities within ServiceNow, including:

• Real-time dashboards showing control status and risk levels

• Automated risk assessments for third-party vendors and internal processes

• Scheduled control testing and validation

• Immediate notification of compliance deviations

  
  

Continuous monitoring helped the client identify and address issues before audits, reducing surprises and accelerating audit cycles by 30%. It also provided measurable risk reduction across third-party and process controls, improving overall compliance posture.

Benefits Realized by the Pharma Client

The transformation delivered clear, measurable benefits:

• 40% reduction in compliance effort through automation and unified controls

• 30% faster audit cycles due to improved evidence availability and continuous monitoring

• Lower risk exposure with proactive control testing and third-party oversight

• Enhanced collaboration across global business units with a centralized compliance framework

• Improved confidence in audit readiness and regulatory adherence

  
  

These results demonstrate how combining domain expertise with technology can simplify complex compliance environments.

How This Approach Can Work for Your Organization

Whether your operations are in Ohio, Pune, Ahmedabad, the UK, or France, the principles remain the same:

• Start by mapping policies to controls across all units to create clarity

• Automate evidence collection to reduce manual effort and errors

• Implement continuous monitoring to maintain ongoing compliance and readiness

  
  

Using REDE’s specialists and ServiceNow models can help you build a unified, audit-ready compliance posture that saves time, reduces risk, and supports growth.

If you want to explore how this approach fits your organization’s needs, consider reaching out to experts who understand both pharma compliance and technology solutions. A tailored assessment can reveal specific opportunities to improve your compliance program.