Business Process – Regulatory Workflow

This is a five-part series blog on the Five Steps to Manage Regulatory Compliance:

1. Regulatory Knowledge base and Taxonomy
2. Risk and Internal Controls
3. Business Process – Regulatory Workflow
4. Location Assets
5. Roles and Responsibilities of Key Management Functions

Today’s post is focusing on the third step which is Business Process – Regulatory Workflow.  Once the organization has identified their EHS internal controls and identified their risks or hazards from high to low, the management would be required to further develop and streamline compliance routines, process and procedures into a coherent system.

• Business Process Impact, compliance process around sites, assets, events, timely decisions – The system should allow you to pull reports so that you are able to understand regulatory change impact and make informed and timely decisions. These days, when regulators do their audit they are not necessarily only interested in knowing if you achieved compliance, but interested in knowing the compliance process around personnel, product, equipment, policies, procedures, materials, assets, sites, events, assets and operating conditions.

• Process automation and cost – Automation is highly Cost Effective. KPMG recently did a research that most of the regulatory compliance is done in silos- various functional departments are managing compliance through multiple tools (some external and some internal) in some cases, most of these tools don’t talk to each other and each department has additional head count to manage compliance-  if regulatory compliance across all divisions is automated through one platform then not only will it be cost effective, it will also increase the performance of the company by being able to make better and timely decisions compare to its competitors.

• Manual vs automation – Vertically integration of all the regulatory departments through one platform should lead to better reporting up the hierarchy and hence a more complete view of critical risks facing the organization. A lack of such oversight was arguably a major cause of the current financial crisis.

Processes that can be Automated:

• Automate corrective action to increase speed, eliminate waste and cut costs
• Automate scheduling, tasking and tracking
• Embed transparency and accountability
• Automate management of change

Process that cannot be Automated:

• Determining applicability
• Subject matter expertise