Turning Compliance into Business Advantage - Tridion

Complying with industry regulations is a headache, not only for the executive team and the IT department, but also for frontline employees involved in sales, marketing and support, according to web content management firm, Tridion.

If company employees cannot find, interpret and implement the relevant policies and procedures in their daily work, it can have a serious impact on the bottom line. Ensuring that standard operating procedures are seamlessly updated and in tune with the brand and goals of the organisation is a critical but often neglected facet of the compliance puzzle.

THE 'C' WORD

Mention the word 'compliance' and most people immediately think of the pain and cost of rebuilding internal IT and financial systems to meet new legislation. In an average medium-sized or large organisation, dozens of IT systems, hundreds of applications and scores of departments, each with their own intranets and public websites, have to be brought into alignment with regulations.

With Sarbanes-Oxley regulations already in force, and Basel II starting in 2006, most businesses have already taken steps to ensure that their IT and financial systems are compliant. Yet it is not only these major international initiatives that have to be complied with. Every country has its own individual rules and regulations, on accessibility of products and services for handicapped people, for example, or on data protection.

Tridion's experience, however, is that the implementation of new systems for data storage, disaster recovery, security and email is only the first part of the puzzle. Organisations also have to be aware of the impact of regulations on the revenue-generating parts of their business, specifically, whether sales, marketing and support staff fully understand what they are and are not allowed to do under the new legislation. As regulatory controls become ever more stringent, the ability to rapidly share updates to standard operating procedures will be critical to company competitiveness and performance.

COMPLIANCE IN PRACTICE

By way of example, in 2005, the European Commission announced its plans for the further integration of European financial markets. Two key focus areas were the integration of retail financial services across Europe (so that consumers can shop across borders for the best deals) and a unified supervisory framework to regulate selling practices.

The retail finance sector is already a highly competitive industry, selling through multiple channels, including online, via banks, post offices and many thousands of independent financial advisors. As the industry becomes truly European, the ability to provide advisors with consistent, up-to-date and searchable information on standard operating procedures will be crucial to staying ahead of the competition.

In the pharmaceuticals industry, sales representatives carry a heavy responsibility not to miss-sell drugs to clinics and hospitals. The ability of pharmaceuticals companies to control the flow of legally approved information on, for example, the side effects of drugs, can literally be the difference between life and death, between business success and a lawsuit. And while perhaps not so life-critical, in the telecommunications sector operators need to be able to share huge amounts of highly complex service and pricing information in a way that both satisfies the regulatory bodies and enables sales teams to actually win business.

Today, most organisations still have highly fragmented systems for developing and sharing standard operating procedures, usually dependent on individuals in each office or country who use locally managed intranets, email or even paper-based manuals to update staff. This often leads to 'copy and paste chaos', where the working practices of frontline staff are not synchronised with corporate guidance and market regulations. At worst, this can result in employees acting illegally; less dramatically, they might not be able to carry out their tasks as efficiently as required. Clearly, a new approach is required.

Tridion is a European provider of web content management solutions for business communication.