“Compliancy”.
We’ve all heard the word before – often in relation to “Sarbanes-Oxley”. But unless federally-mandated for your business, chances are good that you’ve not spent too much time considering whether your organization could benefit from adopting a set of compliancy guidelines.
Becoming “compliant” means that an organization has agreed to conduct their business according to an acknowledged set of rules that – regardless of their specific subject matter – boil down to just four things:
- Automated auditing of & reporting on business activities
- Threshold monitoring and exception management
- Transactional alerts
- Automated workflow
Now – if you agree that these 4 processes are generally good for improving the overall health of a business, wouldn’t you also agree that they’d be equally good for the operations of an ERP solution?
Over the past few years, some organizations using ERP software have willfully begun to adopt “compliancy” rules – rules that were previously thought to apply to only a small number of large, public corporations. When we investigate why this is happening, we learn that compliancy software provides an organization with the following two benefits:
- Better decision-making & improved efficiency. The process of defining compliancy rules typically results in the identification of ERP “best practices”. And any system that enables & enforces such practices can only be of benefit to an organization.
- Improved customer relations. The core of any business is customer communications – and the heart of compliance is “keeping people informed”. Thus the implementation of a solution that fosters better communications is an obvious benefit to an organization.
So – with these rather clear benefits, one is tempted to ask why every organization isn’t clamoring to adopt a compliancy solution?
The answer – historically – has been that compliancy solutions are either too expensive to purchase, too complex to implement, or both.
That answer is no longer true, thanks to “Business Activity Monitoring” (or “BAM”) software.
BAM arose out of the direct need for cost-conscious organizations to automate the four processes that embody the drive for compliance.
BAM solutions automate the monitoring of business data; exactly what conditions are monitored are determined by each organization and are based on their specific business model, their industry, and any compliance regulations that exist for them.
BAM’s ability to analyze ERP data approaches that of interactive “slice and dice” solutions, so that thresholds, exceptions, and cross-departmental analyses are possible. BAM includes the real-time delivery of relevant data, whether those communications are as simple as a short text message to an employee’s cell phone saying “shipment number 123 has will not be delivered on time” or as sophisticated as an emailed “Part Failure Performance” report backed up by historical analysis.
And because compliance implies correcting situations that fall outside of compliancy guidelines BAM technologies go beyond communications to the actual automation of corrective business processes – such as going back into your ERP solution and putting a hold on shipments of a particular part number that is failing to meet up to pre-determined specifications.
But beyond the functional aspect of Business Activity Monitoring, what really sets BAM solutions apart from other compliancy-support systems is their low price point combined with low total cost of ownership. BAM solutions can be adopted for less than $2,000 per company – and rarely exceed a maximum cost of $10,000.
Compliancy automation gives organizations greater visibility into their everyday business activities. It gives them faster recognition of – and the ability to correct – exceeded thresholds and exceptions within their daily processes. And compliance pushes organizations to define “best practices of operation” that yield optimum business results – both for your own internal staff as well as for the customers and suppliers you work with.
Given the choice between adopting a compliancy system and not adopting one, the potential business benefits to adopting compliance rules make that an easy decision. With the advent of Business Activity Monitoring technologies, organizations can now investigate the implementation of a compliancy system in a manageable and cost-effective manner.
Vrakas Blum
