A Better Way to Understand Regulatory Compliance

MAKATI CITY, Philippines - April 24, 2014 - PRLog -- Worldwide, regardless of location or industry, the burden of compliance, regulation and legislation is growing.  With this come tough penalties for the directors and officers of businesses that do not comply.  While the regulations for each country may differ, all share two common threads:

- Preservation of data & documents (retention)
- Retrieval of data & documents (discovery)

In summary, all companies are responsible for preservation of data, failure to retrieve documents in the case of litigation or audit can result in large fines/penalties.

In addition to the challenge of compliance, many companies have the task of managing a large number of documents (archives of millions of pages are not uncommon), with the result that at the same time as legislation is becoming stricter, the volume of information businesses must retain and manage is increasing.

Over and above any regulatory requirements that must be observed for legal reasons, and the benefits that can be achieved in terms of productivity/transparency/accountability, document management should play a key role in the implementation of any sound, effective business continuity program.

Challenges:
Maintaining current copies of all documents that are subject to audit for compliance purposes.  Retrieving one document out of millions that may have been incorrectly filed, or lost.

Implications:
Business disruption, increased audit costs, damage to the company’s reputation, indefensible contractual lawsuits, permanent loss of valuable documentation.

Solution:
A document management system (DMS) bring many benefits, one of which is protecting hardcopy data which addresses the need for “retention”.  With correctly indexed documents, search and retrieval of documents is simple, which supports the other critical function of legislation such as Sarbanes–Oxley “discovery”.

For documents that are subject to a statutory retention period, the hard copies can be stored off-site with a reputable records management company, with the electronic copies available for retrieval at the click of a button.