Monitoring runs against the company's own regulatory footprint without anyone starting it, so nothing waits for an analyst to have a free afternoon.
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From manual regulatory monitoring to a standing watch
Client
Date
$50B+ global technology company
08/2026
The challenge
A $50B+ global technology company runs a 70-person regulatory affairs function. Finding, reading, structuring and routing regulatory developments was manual and reactive, consuming most of the team's capacity before any analysis or action could start, and by the time an item reached the right people weeks had often passed.
The solution
FifthRow set up a standing regulatory intelligence system: public and official sources in, scored and mapped developments out, delivered into the tools the team already works in. It runs continuously against the company's own regulatory footprint rather than on request.
1,938
analyst-hours displaced in two weeks6 of 6
acceptance criteria the client set, met or exceededScope of the standing watchevery regulatory exposure area the company's business lines touch, across its principal operating jurisdictions
Verified regulatory developments returned in the first two weeks224
Analyst time displaced in the first two weeks~1,938 hours
Acceptance criteria set in advance by the company's own legal and regulatory leads6 of 6 met or exceeded
Capacity projected to be recaptured at full deployment25 to 35 full-time equivalents, being 50 to 70% of the time the function spends acquiring and synthesising material
The first layer replaces the part of the job that consumed most of the team's week: going and looking. It watches the company's own regulatory footprint continuously rather than when someone has time.
Core Activities
- Monitors official and public sources continuously across the jurisdictions the company operates in
- Surfaces draft legislation, proposed rules, enforcement actions and policy signals as they appear rather than after they land
- Tracks open and upcoming comment windows with their timelines attached
- Follows proceedings and meetings that signal where a rule is heading
- Covers every regulatory exposure area the company's business lines touch, on architecture designed to extend to further jurisdictions
The Results
The function no longer discovers a development because someone happened to read the right newsletter. Coverage is a specification rather than a function of who had a free afternoon, and comment windows are visible while there is still time to use them.
1,483
sources reviewed in two weeks with no analyst reading timeAcquiring the material is the cheap half. The second layer does what analysts previously did by hand: works out what each item means for this company, and who has to do something about it.
Core Activities
- Structures every item into requirements, penalties, deadlines and what it affects
- Maps each one to the parts of the business it lands on, calibrated to this company rather than to a generic model
- Classifies relevance as high, medium or low, with the reasoning attached rather than as a bare label
- Classifies urgency, separating what needs watching from what needs assessing and what needs acting on now
- Determines scope and applicability, including indirect and cascading exposure, and returns a recommended next step with an owner and a timeframe
The Results
Raw regulatory material arrives as decisions rather than as reading. Every item carries the same structure, the same scoring and the same reasoning, so two people looking at the same development reach the same view of what it means.
224
verified developments returned with a relevance call and a recommended actionThe third layer puts the intelligence where the work already happens, and keeps everything it has ever processed queryable rather than filed.
Core Activities
- Delivers structured output through an interface other internal systems can consume directly
- Makes the intelligence queryable from the internal assistants teams already use, so a question is asked in the tool people are in
- Sends digests on whatever cadence a team needs, daily, weekly or custom, rather than one fixed report
- Exports into the document, presentation and spreadsheet formats the function already writes in
- Keeps every processed item stored, source-verified and retrievable, with a full audit trail on each one
The Results
Legal, product, compliance and policy pull from the same source of truth and can run their own analyses on top of it. Regulatory intelligence stops being a periodic deliverable and becomes a body of structured data that compounds with every cycle.
4
functions working from one verified intelligence base instead of separate trackersWhat it proved
In an initial two-week run against part of the footprint, the system reviewed 1,483 sources, returned 224 verified regulatory developments each carrying a relevance call and a recommended action, and displaced an estimated 1,938 hours of analyst reading, structuring and write-up. Six acceptance criteria set in advance by the company's own legal and regulatory leads were all met or exceeded, including full accuracy on source acquisition and a three of three match against the company's subject-matter experts on relevance.
The system has since moved into production. At full deployment it is projected to recapture 25 to 35 full-time equivalents of capacity, between 50 and 70% of the time the function currently spends acquiring and synthesising material, and to bring response time down from weeks to under a day. Those two figures are projections from the measured window rather than results recorded to date. What the function already holds is a continuous watch over its own footprint, one structured record in place of separate trackers kept by different people, and a permanent, source-verified body of intelligence that four internal functions can query for themselves.
Results
MetricBenchmarkResultImprovement
Analyst time spent finding, reading and structuring source material
Benchmark: most of a 70-person function's capacity, before any analysis or action could startResult: ~1,938 hours displaced in the first two weeks
capacity returned to analysis and actionAcceptance criteria set in advance by the company's own legal and regulatory leads
Benchmark: 6 criteria agreed, none previously demonstratedResult: 6 of 6 met or exceeded, including 100% on source acquisition accuracy and a 3 of 3 match on relevance against subject-matter experts
full passConsistency of coverage
Benchmark: each analyst tracked their own areas by their own method, so the same development could be caught by one and missed by anotherResult: one structured record, scored and mapped the same way for every item
single standard across the functionVisibility of open comment windows
Benchmark: surfaced late, and sometimes missed entirelyResult: open and upcoming windows tracked with their timelines attached
windows seen in advance rather than discoveredCovering an area the team knew it was not reaching
Benchmark: ad hoc external engagements commissioned when a gap surfacedResult: continuous in-house monitoring of the areas in scope
held in-house rather than commissionedEvery development is summarised, scored and mapped the same way, so one view replaces the separate trackers different people used to keep.
Each item arrives with a relevance call, an urgency level and a recommended next step, so routing no longer depends on who read it first.
Every item carries its source and an audit trail, so a regulatory position can be defended long after the decision was taken.
Structured intelligence is stored and retrievable rather than filed, so teams run their own analyses on a base that grows with every cycle.
Intelligence arrives inside the systems the function already uses, rather than becoming another place someone has to remember to check.
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