The partnership between an organisation’s compliance professionals and internal stakeholders is crucial to protect the business and reputation of the company from potential regulatory and legal risks, as well as problems found in controls. A proactive relationship between compliance professionals and internal stakeholders reinforces critical and sustainable compliance processes throughout the organisation.
In addition, many regulators have set expectations for the partners that organisations work with. They emphasise that business partners must also commit to the organisation’s compliance programme and thus companies should consider several aspects when selecting their partners. In particular, the EU’s new Corporate Sustainability Reporting and Due Diligence Directives make these responsibilities mandatory and comprehensive.
Compliance is essential for all organisations, regardless of their size.
Compliance is essential for all organisations, regardless of their size. It aims to ensure that a company and its employees comply with regulatory and legal requirements, internal policies and procedures, uphold the values of the organisation and fulfil their responsibilities to stakeholders. Business partners committed to compliance understand and recognise that their actions, however large or small, have an impact on the organisation. The accountability of the company’s stakeholders for compliance is also important.
The organisation’s compliance professionals can promote accountability among internal partners by sharing with them the priorities of a compliance programme. It is also important to communicate effectively and clearly the purpose of the company’s compliance programme, which will help internal partners to act with purpose and to see that they too have an influential role to play in compliance activities.
When a company’s stakeholders understand their legal obligations, they feel part of the solution and are more likely to engage with the company.
Help employees to understand the “why”, as the “why” of compliance drives all actions in the organisation. When stakeholders understand their legal obligations, they feel part of the solution and are more likely to engage with the company. Compliance becomes even more critical as commercial and operational issues become more complex as businesses grow. The obvious “why” of compliance may be to reduce risk, build trust between business, consumers and stakeholders, make it easier for employees to do the right thing and expose wrongdoing. However, compliance also inspires leaders to innovate and define what the organisation does and why it does it through aligned values that in turn help create value and growth.
What would be the point of getting the income now if you lose it later, when things are not done right, apart from the reputation?
Compliance underpins strong commercial performance. A strong partnership between compliance professionals and business teams helps increase employee productivity and efficiency, reduces and mitigates business risks, and provides insight to help organisations make smarter business decisions. Compliance is necessary for commercial competition, as it enables a company to meet specific industry or regulatory requirements. If you can demonstrate to customers that your organisation takes compliance seriously, it can provide a competitive advantage and help avoid getting involved in regulatory investigations or studies. It can also save your organisation money by avoiding significant fines and other penalties.
A robust compliance program can help create clarity around certain processes that support commercial initiatives and in turn deliver business value, which can help increase revenue. Properly implemented and adhered to, a compliance program can protect a company’s brand and reputation, increase consumer confidence in an organization’s products or services, mitigate disruptions that can undermine strategic priorities, and partner in growth opportunities.
There are also views that compliance is a default rather than a competitive advantage. The emphasis here is on the quality of compliance activities and operations, their day-to-day functionality and cost-effectiveness. When calculating costs, it is also necessary to assess the additional work to be done by others than the direct costs of compliance resources alone. For example, the future validations required by the CSRD may be very labor-intensive in a broader context. EFRAG estimates the annual cost of validations at €136,000 for companies not covered by the current NFRD.
A solid compliance programme is a key activity to help grow revenues.
The compliance team must understand the commercial strategy. The compliance environment is constantly evolving, and if the compliance team does not understand the strategic requirements or commercial drivers of their organisation, the advice they give will not be relevant or effective in addressing risk, which could limit the achievement of business objectives.
A compliance programme is often seen as a ‘bureaucracy’ that slows down an organisation’s access to markets or growth opportunities. However, when compliance professionals gain visibility into business objectives and have “seat at the table” when addressing them, they can advise on compliance issues in a way that proactively identifies and mitigates risks, protects the company’s brand and reputation, and strengthens the organization’s competitiveness in the marketplace. This reinforces the fact that a solid compliance programme helps to increase revenues.
An effective and collaborative framework with the compliance team often also allows commercial teams to enter the market faster.
Compliance and commercial teams have the same goal: to promote growth and protect revenues. While compliance professionals establish compliance controls, policies, procedures and training for all company employees, accountability must also be in the hands of others in the organisation, as compliance is everyone’s responsibility in business.
Building bridges between compliance and business teams helps to share information and coordinate risk remediation. In almost all situations, good collaboration between business partners and compliance professionals leads to better commercial results by providing a consistent model for organisational activities that meet specific compliance requirements. An effective and collaborative framework with compliance professionals often also enables commercial teams to enter the market faster.
Critical to success is that the compliance team approaches issues from a business perspective and makes recommendations to address compliance issues with an understanding of and interest in the business. A close partnership with the business will help ensure that compliance is not a barrier to operations, and that requirements are tailored to address specific risks to the business and benefit the organisation’s business. This also creates a proactive culture that helps address risks much more quickly, which can lead to lower costs.
With NordCheck, your company can manage its compliance issues comprehensively.
Compliance professionals should be flexible and contribute to the organisation’s business and strategic priorities. Compliance should be a partner to help ensure success.
NordCheck’s compliance professionals help your company manage its affairs comprehensively. The NordCheck Regulation & Policy Management solution manages the documentation required by standards, among other things, and helps identify regulatory requirements and enforce them by identifying the right control points.
Our solutions are modular, easy to deploy. They apply best practices and apply policies, roles and quality requirements familiar to users. They can be flexibly adapted to your company’s own policies and processes. We are developing our solutions to meet the challenges of the future. We take timely account of future regulation and digitalisation in different compliance areas.
NordCheck patents new inventions and our visionary, innovative approach serves our clients well. Our platform is exceptionally flexible and can be easily extended to meet future regulatory requirements.
Giving business stakeholders a seat at the table with compliance professionals ensures that compliance requirements are integrated into strategic plans.