Gaining insight into the bottlenecks and points for improvement

The baseline measurement focuses on policies and your risk and compliance management. A policy supported by the leadership and staff is often a critical success factor in organizing the function effectively. Bottlenecks and areas for improvement may include:

• The adequacy for the corporate compliance function of the overview and understanding of the organization of business activities. Do the management and security measures have sufficient impact on the organization, and do business and department management experience the added value of risk and compliance processes in driving business operations?
• Is the level of knowledge among internal and external staff sufficient to effectively manage business processes?
• Are business activities adequately organized by coherent processes and are effective control measures included in the processes?
• Do the IT systems offer sufficient possibilities to effectively support the business processes as well as the control measures?

The baseline approach consists in outline:

• Context analysis of the company, area of responsibility and environment (groups of partners such as customers, employees and suppliers);
• Overview and understanding of business activities, relevant legislation and policy frameworks;
• Depending on the scope and scope overview of and coherence between business processes, including control measures, by which business activities are organized;
• An impression of the governance, risk and compliance structure, roles, powers and responsibilities, and internal and external lines of accountability;
• The extent to which IT cloud systems effectively support business processes and the extent to which employees have sufficient knowledge to effectively drive the business processes; and
• Assessing the effectiveness of the corporate compliance function and underlying risk and compliance management.

In the approach, we can focus on the effectiveness of a company’s corporate compliance function or instead emphasize the underlying organization of business activities. It is also possible to have thematic emphases including:

• Assess policy making, execution and accountability;
• Inventory flows of corporate and personal data and adequacy of control measures. If desired, and by extension, the assessment of whether trade secrets are adequately protected can be included;
• Global risk assessment of business and personal data and protection by measures; or
• Assess your partners’ fulfillment of contractual obligations and exercise of your rights.

Constructively going through the baseline process creates a favorable context among employees for implementing a scenario for improvement. After implementing changes in the organization of business activities, employees take over the direction of business processes.

The corporate compliance function incorporates the revamped organization into a maintenance strategy. Specifically, this means that risk management is operational and the included control measures are periodically subjected to an effectiveness review. In this way, the company becomes stronger and stronger, taking itself to a higher level of maturity.

It may be desirable to have a baseline measurement performed by us. The condition is that our employee can perform the work in cooperation with the key employees, who are responsible for driving business processes by which business activities are organized.

There are many reasons for performing a baseline measurement. Often they are signals from employees about bottlenecks and areas for improvement and or disproportionate administrative organizational efforts and costs to organize business activities.

By conducting a baseline measurement, management addresses the signals and an appropriate remedy can be taken.