Create a Corporate Compliance Culture

No matter how hard companies may try to departmentalize compliance efforts, sooner or later, they come to realize that compliance cannot be siloed--it must be based on a corporate state of mind. The reason?With the proliferation of regulations, risks, and industry standards--and the super-sizing of fines--there can no longer be any doubt that compliance is an enterprise-wide concern.

Increasingly, companies are recognizing the importance of bringing compliance front and center across the company. The best way to move your enterprise in this direction is to centralize governance, risk, and compliance efforts with enterprise-wide controls, processes, and accountability requirements all aimed at establishing a corporate culture of compliance.

Staying off this bandwagon is one sure way to increase risk—which is why we urge you to consider the following tips for achieving an enterprise-wide emphasis on compliance:

And, finally—centralize, centralize, centralize. A distributed approach to compliance simply doesn’t work in today’s environment and can only increase compliance risks and costs. Click here to learn more.

Compliance as a Path to Profitability

Despite the increasing attention paid in the media to the risks of inadequate compliance practices in companies large and small alike, some companies fail to recognize that compliance is the Achilles heel of corporate profitability. Sales can be strong, profitability can be strong, and customers can be satisfied.But if those sales have not been recorded and reported properly, companies are likely to incur the mythological-like wrath of federal and state regulatory bodies.

But beyond simply avoiding fines and negative publicity, good compliance practices can be profitable. In fact, (according to a recent white paper Doing Compliance Right by Thomas G. Goddard, PhD, JD, CEO of Integral Healthcare Solutions, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., ) there is a strong correlation between compliance quality and stock price performance. Which is all the more reason it may come as a surprise that some companies remain convinced that regulatory compliance is unrelated to bottomline health. Although there is, as yet, no definitive linear and causal relationship between compliance programs and profitability, it certainly seems clear that the costs of the former do not necessarily minimize the latter.

Furthermore, the risk of fines is quite real. And the risk of fine amounts exceeding the costs of rigorous compliance programs carries an even higher probability. Or, put another way, the costs of compliance are very likely to be substantially lower than the costs of noncompliance.

Not to be overlooked is the fact that fine amounts appear to be directly related to the severity and chronic nature of the noncompliance events. Of even greater concern is the trend towards higher and higher fines, as enforcement activities gain increasing vigor. In other words, culpability can cost dearly, so if profitability is a driver, compliance is a no-brainer.

Compliance can further streamline the path to profitability because companies that do a good job of compliance and communicate this message well, find greater satisfaction levels among employees. Lower stress levels associated with fewer concerns about working in profligate companies seems to be the reason. After all, if a company is a good corporate citizen, it is likely to be a stable company.

In short, contrary to popular myths:

Introducing an Innovative Compliance & Legal Forums Module

A New Way to Obtain, Manage, and Distribute Key Compliance and Legal Information

In a regulatory environment where both change and complexity are constants, robust and comprehensive governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions, in and of themselves, are no longer sufficient to meet the challenges companies face today. Equally important is the need Compliance Officers have for information pertaining to compliance and legal issues, the kind of information that can empower users of Compliance 360 solutions to optimize the performance of their compliance programs.

To meet this demand, we have released the “Compliance & Legal Forums Module.” The module is interactive, enabling user communities to ask and answer questions pertaining to compliance and other legal issues, and to manage frequently asked questions (FAQs) within the context of our integrated GRC solution.

Key features and benefits of the Compliance & Legal Forums Module include: