Anti-corruption compliance efforts are rarely, if ever, as easy as a-b-c. However, these endeavors would be much easier and more effective if more companies understood—and de­ployed—their ABCs.

“ABC” refers to anti-bribery and cor­ruption analytics, which are statistical techniques that comb through massive amounts of data and sniff out unusual patterns, questionable transactions, and compliance risks buried deeply within or­ganizational information systems. These analytics mine vast amounts of data via clustering, variance-detection, linguistic searches, and other techniques. When po­tential problems are detected, analytical tools issue automatic alerts calling for fur­ther investigation.