Compliance: What every CEO needs to know

Why is compliance so important?

Legal and regulatory compliance is increasingly becoming one of the key strategic pillars to not only retaining a license to operate and preventing costly incidents but also a competitive advantage for amongst others brand recognition, preferred employer status to attract talent, marketing, preferential supplier status, pro-active positioning for the future and investment risk profile depending on the industry and organisational size.

Sustainable strategic advantage of any enterprise is one of the main responsibilities of the CEO and the executive team. To establish and maintain a sustainable strategic advantage the CEO requires accurate intelligence to direct strategic compliance related deliberations and decisions The focus of this article centres around the minimum intelligence required by the CEO to prevent either inertia or planning in the absence of fact.

What type of intelligence is essential?

Strategic compliance intelligence can be categorised into four distinct categories

Compliance awareness Indicators of awareness, understanding and commitment amongst all relevant staff at all levels in the organisation to both the collective and individual specific legal, regulatory and standards compliance requirements	Key information include: Training requirements met/overdue Awareness and understanding of documented requirements Awareness of periodic compliance requirement adjustments
Compliance monitoring Indicators of effective monitoring and communication of compliance trends in the organisation and the collective appreciation and understanding of the implications and reasons for compliance level variations at any given point in time.	Key information include: Compliance to relevant legislation and international standards Risk exposure to due to noncompliance Compliance to internal policies and procedures Recurring non-conformances
​Compliance assurance Indicators of actual compliance assurance effectiveness and discipline to identify and assure timely and sustainable preventative and corrective action to address, maintain or improve compliance trends.	Key information include: Checks and inspections completion rate and quality Capacity for the work that needs to be done Task and corrective action completion rate Overdue maintenance items
Compliance optimisation Indicators on how compliance status is exploited to provide opportunities for a sustainable advantage in any of the various areas of commercial competition.	Key information include: Trends in nonconformities Risk status improvement trends Compliance trends and continuous audit results

How can Ariscu assist?

Ariscu Insights uses our best of breed technology processes to analyse data and deliver actionable information to decision-makers. The purpose is to assist corporate executives, business managers, and other operational workers in making better and informed business decisions. Ariscu Insights provide historical, current, and predictive views of compliance trends as useful guide into maximising compliance awareness, improving monitoring effectiveness, identifying best assurance practices, and recognising ways to optimise compliance management processes.

What can Ariscu Insights provide?

Ariscu Insights tracks the following key metrics to include more processes and activities to help improve performance.

Mine data: Using multi-layered design to extract detail and consolidated results	Share results: Sharing results to draw conclusions and make decisions.	Report performance: Compare performance against goals, benchmarks or history.
​Describe results: Analyse data to determine and describe what happened.	Query specific results: Extract specific results from the datasets.	Analyse trends: Use statistical analysis to determine how and why.
Visualise data: Turning data analysis into visual reports and dashboards	​Narrate results: Provide visual storytelling to communicate insights	Integrate data: Integrate multiple internal and external data sources.