The World is Flat—Compliance Goes Global

Additionally, this approach increases the efficiency of compliance processes, as all content is stored in and accessible from a central location using only a browser on the user's desktop. Similarly, with change control management and version control capabilities, companies can ensure compliance team members are working with the most current version of documentation.

The Best of Both Worlds

With the growing number of mandates worldwide, it is critical for companies to quickly implement IT systems that can optimize compliance processes and corporate governance best practices, and be rolled out effectively across global organizations, taking into account localization, distributed ownership and multiple user languages.

Often, organizations are faced with the decision to purchase an application tailored to a specific mandate or a more comprehensive technology architecture that would involve a great deal of customization to support each regulation. Each option has its pros and cons.

A unified compliance platform offers the best of both worlds. It provides a common foundation of content and compliance services and a single repository to manage and optimize all compliance-related content and processes. At the same time, it can provide pure-play applications that effectively facilitate compliance with a particular mandate, including support of specific methodologies and approaches such as those typified by financial compliance legislation.

The bottom line: enterprise technologies providing the ability to manage multiple compliance initiatives and transform individual processes into sustainable business practices can best reduce enterprise risk, increase auditor and regulator confidence in a company's control structures, and make global compliance processes as productive as possible.

Key Components of Stellent's Unified Compliance Platform

• A central, Web-based repository where content for all compliance initiatives is stored and managed. This repository gives users a single view and access point for all compliance documentation, making it easy to share information that may apply to a variety of regulatory mandates. It is the single source for secure data that is up-to-date and consistent across the organization. Data access activity also is recorded; the time and identity of the user accessing data is captured in an audit trail supporting the compliance process.
• Change control management for all documentation involved in compliance processes. This function includes version-control capabilities that allow companies to easily identify the most current version of a document, while archiving previous versions for review and audit purposes. Change control management features also provide audit trails that track the history of compliance documentation and related processes.
• Task automation or workflow capabilities that automatically notify individuals via email when a compliance task must be performed or documentation must be reviewed and approved. This feature also may be used to schedule due date reminders and escalate activities to a higher level of management.
• Retention management for the automatic disposition of records and non-records. This functionality also provides single-source discovery and lock down for both records and non-records.
• Business process management for automating, maturing and optimizing internal controls. By turning manual business processes into automated tasks, companies can reduce the costs and time associated with compliance-related internal controls.
• Web publishing of policies and procedures to facilitate communication with target constituents, which is a critical requirement of most regulations. Stellent's universal compliance platform enables users to subscribe to specific published content or types of content they want to monitor. When that content is updated or added, an email is automatically sent to subscribers, alerting them of the change. Additionally, companies can track the number of users that have viewed or accessed particular content.
• Reporting capabilities that allow organizations to analyze data to determine where they are in or out of compliance and where high risks exist. A dashboard-style interface with field-specific terminology enables executives to easily monitor compliance activities.
• Pure-play applications, such as the Stellent Sarbanes-Oxley Solution, that "sit on top of" Stellent's common content management foundation. These applications feature terminology and interfaces customized for each compliance mandate.
• Internationalization for multinational deployments. For companies with global technology deployments, localized language support facilitates adoption across business units and geographies. Available languages include French, German, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish.