Policy Management – Are you Managing for Compliance or Integrity?
Are You Managing for Compliance or Integrity
Regulatory standards and industry best practices serve a valuable purpose in helping to minimize corporate misconduct. In this age of a global Internet and the constant threat of viral messages through social media, any such corporate transgression can be brought to the attention of a global audience within hours. Comprehensive compliance practices can help to avoid that outcome, but as consumer expectations shift to even higher standards, your company may be missing an opportunity to promote its brand based on integrity rather than compliance.
Media coverage of corporate misconduct increasingly includes defensive statements from corporate legal teams that the company in question was operating in full compliance with existing regulations and is therefore eligible for full absolution. Consumers’ experiencing the subsequent product recalls, warranty repairs, or class-action lawsuits, no longer find those statements to be acceptable. If established industry regulations still allow such misconduct to occur, then from their perspective, compliance to those standards doesn’t really add any perceived value to a company’s reputation.
Once existing regulations have been assessed as being the bare minimum or so full of loopholes as to serve no real purpose, any attestation of compliance to those regulations, whether for legal or marketing purposes, can actually devalue the reputation that a company may have taken decades to build. On the upside, any effort to go above and beyond those minimal regulations can now be leveraged as a significant differentiator. Consumers expect more and they are willing to do business with companies that can deliver more.
Most organizations focus their compliance efforts on the prevention of unlawful conduct. Policies are created, distributed and formally documented through attestation statements to ensure that, should it become necessary, the lawyers can prove that everyone knew what constituted illegal behavior. Selling that as a positive marketing message represents a significant challenge. Imagine how the future growth of your business could be impacted by a message that offered a clear commitment to ethical corporate conduct, both in terms of internal processes and external market practices.
Corporations are already gaining market share on the basis of social and environmental practices. Committing to operational benchmarks that far exceed current regulatory standards can have the same positive effect.
Our comprehensive Compliance Software solutions can help you to manage your internal processes and procedures and give you the accurate data you need to position your company as a compliance leader. Operating on one secure SharePoint portal using templates built on industry best practices, you can manage every element of compliance workflow from policy and contract creation to management and ongoing renewal.
The opportunity to promote industry-leading compliance practices is closer than you may think. To learn more about our software now available on SharePoint 2013, SharePoint Online via Office 365, and as a Software-as-a-Service, schedule a demo now.
