SIX ELEMENTS TO BUYING A COMPLIANCE SOLUTION. Convercent All Rights Reserved.

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1 SIX ELEMENTS TO BUYING A COMPLIANCE SOLUTION Convercent All Rights Reserved. 1

2 INTRODUCTION Compliance programs are nothing new, and neither are compliance software solutions. However, compliance demands, regulations, the make up of workforces and the expectations of employees have changed over the past decade. This has left many companies reevaluating their compliance solutions and looking for better alternatives to meet new needs and provide deeper program insight. Luckily, new solutions have appeared to meet these changing demands. When shopping for a new compliance solution, where do you start? First, consider your needs and pain points and let that form the framework of your search. Beyond those specific programmatic pain points, keep the following criteria in mind to ensure you purchase a scalable, modern solution and won t be shopping again anytime soon. 2 Convercent All Rights Reserved.

3 1 INTEGRATED Compliance programs have many functions and features. Your chosen compliance solution should help you manage as many of these as possible in one integrated suite, minimizing program fragrmentation and allowing you to pool intelligence across the entire system for deep visibility. Few of today s platforms were built from the ground up as fully integrated compliance solutions. Most were pieced together through mergers and acquisitions a policy management solution from here tacked onto an incident reporting system from there. They may work, but remain separate systems on the backend, papered over to make them appear like one product. The ability to leverage intelligence across the domains of your program such as policies, training, case management and disclosures for the full picture of risk into your organization is lost in this cobbled together process. This may not seem like an issue if you are currently shopping to solve a single initiative, but your needs will likely grow over time, which will ultimately cost more down the road. Even if you begin by addressing a single pain point, consider scalable technologies so that expansion is easy if you need to meet growing demands or keep up with program maturity. Convercent All Rights Reserved. 3

4 2 INTELLIGENT Your compliance solution should be capable of analyzing data from across the system to give you real-time views of success and opportunity. Many compliance technologies only allow you to gather and analyze metrics within the software that runs that initiative. This means your training course completion rates are housed in one program while your controls regarding a particular regulation live in an entirely separate unconnected system. These types of siloed metrics do not provide deep insight into the overall health of your organization or the interconnectedness of initiatives your policies and traning have a direct impact on case reports, and they re all tied to risk. An integrated solution enables important analysis across the solution s entire reach, allowing for cross initiative comparison, and influence and trend identification. For example, wouldn t it be useful to understand whether an employee has been trained on FCPA regulations and attested to the company s FCPA polices, yet a whistleblower report was filled regarding that employee bribing officials? Or perhaps a particular location that wasn t properly educated on company risks is seeing an increase in workplace incidents. This kind of analysis provides a realtime view into the success of your compliance efforts, what areas need work and whether risks still occurred and at what rate. Intelligence enables you to stay ahead of problems before they occur, not just an audit trail showing you had prevention measures in place. 4 Convercent All Rights Reserved.

5 3 INTUITIVE Your compliance solution should be intuitive and easy to use by any employee, from the front office to the warehouse. Compliance solutions must address complex functions. Unfortunately, this often leaves usability last in the minds of designers and engineers. But this doesn t mean usability shouldn t be a hallmark of your new compliance solution. With the many responsibilities and competing duties on the plates of compliance officers and their teams, a clunky, complicated and often ugly interface doesn t make the job any easier. Even more damaging, this phenomenon can spread to the intake channels your employees rely on to report issues and ask questions. If these platforms aren t intuitive and easy to use, it can drive up report abandonment rates and leave you in the dark regarding important compliance issues. When shopping for compliance software, look for a solution that makes your job easier with elegant workflows, customizable reports and dashboards that surface the most important information to you right away, and is easy to learn without weeks of training the software should be understandable at a glance. Software as a field has advanced so much that teams no longer have to put up with confusing, hard to use systems, so much so that intuititivness can be make or break for your investiment. Convercent All Rights Reserved. 5

6 4 ENGAGING Your compliance solution should not only be easy on the eyes, but also allow you to implicitly encourage behaviors consistent with your company s policies, initiatives and goals. Ultimately, for compliance efforts to be effective they need to be more than just topdown decrees. Compliance is best ensured by encouraging employee engagement and your compliance solution should make that engagement easy and inviting for your entire company. Engagement comes in many flavors, from ensuring your policies are easy to understand and access to offering training via multiple mediums for better employee understanding and making reporting and disclosure management channels as simple and non-threatening as possible. Regular communication is also extremely important. Compliance will remain top of mind for employees if they continuously see policy updates, training reminders and simple compliance newsletters that prove compliance is important to the company as a whole and engrained in the organization s fabric. To ensure communication doesn t fall to the wayside during busy times look for a solution that makes creating and scheduleing regular communications and reminders simple and fast. 6 Convercent All Rights Reserved.

7 5 MOBILE Your compliance solution should be available anywhere, on any device, at any time to better facilitate timely communication, training and engagement. Whether you re a manufacturer with employees on the shop floor or a high tech company with developers overseas or anything in between you need to reach your staff wherever they are. For many organizations, not every employee has easy access to a computer and mailing compliance materials (such as policies and training courses) is cumbersome and hard to track. Beyond that, many of today s workers expect mobile access as a fact of life, not a nice to have. A solution that is available anywhere, on any device, at any time allows for timely and consistent initiative rollout and easy consumption for users and tracking for compliance professionals. Regardless of specific compliance needs, a program that is accessible via both web and mobile is a must-have in today s business world. Convercent All Rights Reserved. 7

8 6 FAST SETUP Your compliance solution should be fast to implement so it can quickly help you mitigate potential risk and ensure a healthier organization. With the advent of the Cloud, setting up a compliance solution has transitioned from a weeks (or months) long on-site installation process to a few days of implementation. In today s competitive and regulatory environment, the faster your new compliance solution is up and running the better. Looks for a solution that has a well-documented implementation process and a track record of completing new set-ups successfully and on time. Making the switch can be complicated, so to ensure everything goes smoothly you ll also want to work with a company that has dedicated implementation project managers to answer your questions, provide initial training and transfer your legacy data. Changing systems should be like ripping off a band-aid, not going on bed rest. 8 Convercent All Rights Reserved.

9 CONCLUSION Convercent was custom built from the ground up specifically to fulfill the needs outlined above the needs of today s compliance professionals. Through the industry s first intelligent dashboard, we give you multidimensional insight into your company s compliance health, all framed within the context of your identified risks. No other solution gives you an integrated suite for managing company policies, tracking employee education, streamlining case management, proactively managing disclosures and aligning all your initiatives to your top risks with deep dive analytics that let you drill into each area to identify trends. The cloud-based app is fast to set up, easy to use and accessible from any device or location. It s a comprehensive, centralized approach designed to increase insight, make reporting easier and ultimately empower compliance professionals to improve their programs from every angle. Convercent All Rights Reserved. 9

10 Convercent s risk-based global compliance solution enables the design, implementation and measurement of an effective compliance program. Delivering an intuitive user experience with actionable executive reporting, Convercent integrates the management of corporate compliance risks, cases, disclosures, training and policies. With hundreds of customers in more than 130 countries including Philip Morris International, CH2M Hill and Under Armour Convercent s award-winning GRC solution safeguards the financial and reputational health of your company. Backed by Azure Capital, Sapphire Ventures (formerly SAP Ventures), Mantucket Capital and Rho Capital Partners, and based in Denver, Colorado, Convercent will revolutionize your company s compliance program. Request a demo today! 10 Convercent All Rights Reserved.