Essentials of Enterprise Compliance

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rom the board of directors and executives to the general management and sales representatives, no one can act as passive, or even limited, advisers to the enterprise they serve.

Members of corporate boards must take an increasingly active role in fulfi lling their fi duciary responsibilities of oversight. They are no longer " window dressing, " and they should act effectively to add value to the company. Executive leadership must proactively engage in the dissemination of guidance, and their managers must actively work to structure compliance within the rank and fi le. Corporate governance has gone from being something " nice to do " to " please a few investors " to an essential component of a company ' s valuation and risk assessment processes.

Although some organizations see compliance as a burden, others see it as an opportunity. Forward -thinking chief fi nancial offi cers (CFOs) are structuring their governance policies, processes, and controls to enhance and reinforce long -term compliance. 1 They plan not only to meet today ' s compliance needs but to go beyond them, and in doing so they create genuine competitive advantages for their organizations.

x These visionaries view regulatory compliance as a catalyst for change. This view can be contrasted with other business leaders who spend their time and resources in a reactive tactical effort to simply address today ' s audit or legal challenges. A study by IDC 2 found that the average company with revenue over $1 billion spends an average of$ 3.70 million annually to meet their Sarbanes -Oxley requirements. These CFOs tend to view legislation like Basel 3 II as a " tax " -an unavoidable and incremental fi nance cost. They seem to hope that it will soon pass.

Moving compliance from overhead to business as usual is the new productivity frontier.

Forward -thinking business and government leaders are seeking out means to strengthen their compliance activities while working to offset the incremental cost of compliance. They recognize this as an opportunity to partner with other areas of the business to lower operating costs and improve business performance by streamlining processes, standardizing reporting, and integrating technologies, while delivering the organization ' s compliance status at any time.

Competitive advantage is achieved through benefi t -driven activities that embed compliance in the " business as usual " operations of an organization, creating a transformational journey from compliance to competitive advantage. Essentials of Enterprise Compliance focuses on this journey. Though each journey has common components, it is also unique to each enterprise. Regardless of law and regulation, the specifi c governance and compliance structure is guided by the unique culture, business processes, information management, I n t r o d u c t i o n xi and enabling information technology (IT) of the enterprise. These unique factors underscore the transformational benefi ts required to be competitive and deliver tangible savings and returns through compliance transformation.

Microsoft believes that to achieve the competitive advantage journey vision, an organization should have technologies that enable its people and become " People Ready. " Delivered through its enabling IT, the technologies must be scalable, security enhanced, and, above all, intuitive to the people within the organization.

Discovering solutions that meet the vision for competitive advantage and compliance requirements, and that enable the forward motion of the enterprise, should be the joint vision of all parties. Isn ' t it time you considered leveraging your investment and delivering tangible results?