Compliance Conundrum: Adjust Corporate Behavior or Collect Better Data?

Government regulation remains one of the top challenges facing business today. CEOs and other business leaders are increasingly finding themselves tending to an ever broader range of compliance issues. Although a presidential election tends to focus the discussion on reducing government regulation in the United States, companies involved in global trade recognize the bigger task is understanding and complying with the growing number of rules and guidelines arising in other countries.

In response, many CEOs and other executives tend to focus on how best to efficiently shift their operations and labor force to comply with these regulations, and organize a team to update their corporate social responsibility policies as needed. The more cost-effective answer, however, is to not retool existing policies and procedures regarding ethical sourcing of materials, hire more internal lawyers, auditors and research specialists, or to increase the frequency of inspections of overseas factories. Rather, the solution is to improve the collection and analysis of the reams of available data that feeds the multitude of compliance reports and filings. 

Multiple Needs – One Compliance Solution

Source Intelligence is a data collection and data investigation specialist understanding the broad and constantly evolving spectrum of regulatory and social issues facing companies. Source Intelligence’s SaaS-based platform, which constantly tracks and analyzes the world’s largest supplier data base and hundreds of thousands of global supply chains, is capable of meeting a comprehensive range of compliance needs.    

The supply chain transparency track began many years ago with conflict minerals reporting and the implementation of the Dodd-Frank act, which required publicly traded companies in the United States to determine whether their products contained minerals mined from a war-torn region of central Africa.

Compliance Programs Data Collection and Reporting Tool

Source Intelligence became the go-to solution for conflict minerals reporting, then quickly scaled and adapted this robust platform to collect and analyze data dealing with modern-day slavery, corruption, restricted substances and more.  Many Source Intelligence companies that utilized SI’s conflict minerals solution soon realized the benefit of a one-stop enterprise solution to collect, analyze and report necessary data covering a broader range of their regulatory and social-issues reporting needs.   

The conflict mineral reporting process was, for many companies, a test on how to squeeze verifiable data from their many suppliers, create a continuous exchange of that information and educate new suppliers to the process.  However, without a global data base and a robust tracking and analysis software, many companies found they were left with minimal verification standards for data transmitted by their vendors and suppliers.

Source Intelligence’s supplier engagement team – a 24/7 operation staffed by multilingual experts – provided companies with an easy-to-integrate process to work with their suppliers without disruption and a better way to manage and analyze supplier-provided data.  By having Source Intelligence collect and manage supplier data, companies realized additional efficiencies and opportunities to communicate with their vendors and suppliers on matters not involving compliance issues.

Source Intelligence’s ““Conflict Minerals Reporting. A Deeper Look into RY2015 SEC Filings” provides an in-depth analysis of how companies are fulfilling their Conflict Minerals Reporting requirements, and how methods are changing and improving over time. To download the full report, click here.