Maintaining regulatory compliance can be a major hassle in some industries, especially for large enterprises that operate across multiple jurisdictions. Assent Compliance Inc. has spent the last seven years working to ease the task.

Today, the Ottawa-based company’s efforts received a new endorsement in the form of a $31.4 million investment led by Greenspring Associates. Assent will use the capital to drive the adoption of its namesake platform, which aims to reduce the amount of work involved in managing the information that companies share with regulators. It’s made up of more than a half-dozen modules that each tackle a different pain point.

The first is data collection. The Assent Compliance platform enables organizations to map out their supply chains, request a bill of materials from each upstream partner and augment the information with custom questionnaires when needed. One firm might be interested in knowing how suppliers source certain chemicals, while another could check if they take adequate care to protect trade secrets.

Assent’s software also makes it possible to create a record of a company’s own internal operations. Once they’ve collected all the needed details, compliance professionals can use the platform’s more advanced data processing features to look for patterns and correct any erroneous records that may show up.

The fact that everything is handled in one place makes the process more consistent than the traditional spreadsheet-centric approach to managing such information. Assent also offers integrations with record-keeping systems from Oracle Corp, SAP SE and other leading providers to help companies ensure data consistency across departments. These features have helped the startup establish a strong foothold in the enterprise.

Assent’s software is used by more than 100 companies in North America, including Fisher Scientific International Inc. and other members of the Fortune 500. Andrew Waitman, the compliance specialist’s chief executive, told TechCrunch that one of the ways he plans to grow that installed base is by investing in the development of machine learning features. The goal is to harness the technology to help companies gain better insight into their regulatory data.

Image: Assent Compliance