Compliance officers have now become more valuable than ever to organizations and should begin taking on a much more active role in the guiding and development of company strategies as they may conflict with issues of a compliance nature, with proper compliance and corporate governance becoming such a high priority subject for most companies in lieu of new SEC and DOJ regulations and enforcement. Corporate records are perhaps the most important resource available to help support these officials with their responsibilities because they contain a cache of vastly important and valid information applicable to assisting compliance professionals as they work towards advising their superiors. Compliance officers could become a great deal more effective and efficient in their duties, however, given a more effective approach to the management of these records,
The documents that these records contain, consist of important data relevant to the decision making process regarding compliance issues. However, the distinction between documents and records is one fact which many companies fail to recognize, which only makes matters more difficult for compliance professionals, and the fact that document management does not equate to records management. Even given the best of systems, it still falls to the compliance officer to sift through these documents, searching them for the necessary data, while companies may invest time and effort into the implementation of systems which seek to manage records by requiring the creation, storage, organization, and eventual disposal of physical documents. Combining records management with data management into a well-organized and cataloged system is ideally how companies should handle these records in order to achieve maximum efficiency.
Companies with a manual system end up spending an excessive amount of time trying to locate specific data within documents a while setting themselves up for unnecessary compliance risks through the inability to competently locate this certain information. Companies must begin implementing new digital document storage systems which creates electronic copies of documents from which necessary data that can be mined through a more highly efficient, automated means in order to avoid such a scenario. With these improvements, companies will reap the benefits for a company’s compliance program by consuming less time and improving the value of informed decision by allowing these decisions to be made, given all the facts.
Companies that wish to employ such a system with have to look to their current system and assess their needs and current methodologies. Now, whether they are working from physical or digital copies they should start by looking at how these materials are stored, and what type of organizational filing system is in use. Next, based on if there is an index companies should ask themselves how accessible this information is, whether or not there is an app to make these documents searchable, what kind of database is being used, and what are its parameters. Finally, looking at what information is most commonly sought, how it is shared, and if this information is driving organizational processes, they will need to look at how this information is being used.
The need for compliance professionals to be able to access a wide range of information as quickly and efficiently as possible will only continue to grow, as the current trend towards better corporate governance continues. Soon they will need to be able to ensure that these matters are handled now in order to safeguard themselves against any risk management threats that may be just over the horizon, if companies hope to stay up to date and not find begin putting themselves to unnecessary risks.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
