| Pressure to comply abounds in business today: stockholders, lenders, customers and vendors all have requirements that must be met. On top of this, compliance laws and regulations add a critical layer of complexity to business conditions. Whether it is to secure compliance certification as part of a mandate from a parent company, vendor requirements or a mandate to fuel a growth initiative, the obligation to adhere is felt by business owners in many industries. Organizations are impacted by numerous compliance requirements from both industry (ISO, QS9000) and government (SEC, HIPPAA, SOX) classifications. Industry compliance standards, although often voluntary, have become the standard by which the quality of products and services are measured, adopted by companies that in turn have required their suppliers or vendors to enact. These standards reach far beyond risk management and data auditing; they affect the entire business, from customer management to vendor processes to technical standards to workflow controls. Since each of these business components are integrated within the organization, a compliance strategy typically becomes a complex, time–consuming and expensive endeavor – not only does the corporate infrastructure require change, but the behavior of the business must be altered. With expectations raised for most businesses to participate in meeting the terms of compliance requirements, the question becomes, Can my business comply? Yes – but there are challenges. To even begin the work of automating these systems and processes, organizations must have a secure framework of information at the core of their business that can be easily accessed for the purpose of achieving compliance. For many, this constitutes a barrier to realizing full compliance. Exact Software has helped many companies achieve compliance standards. In doing so, we have identified the key areas to successful compliance implementation: - Automate the workflow processes, documents and materials required to begin the compliance process, while ensuring that these components are centralized, integrated, and made visible to the organization, the supplier, and the customer.
- Confront the resource challenges that organizations experience with tools that give employees the means to perform their jobs. Those tools must be available at all levels and across all departments to guarantee continuous improvement.
- Ensure that non–conformances are identified, tracked, and stored properly while allowing stakeholders, including customers and suppliers, to initiate non–conformances.
It is this structure of information, processes and resources that will enable organizations to fully realize the benefits of compliance strategies.
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