The benefits of complying.................................................................
Think about what the world is saying about product compliance:
If you are to be fully compliant, your legislators demand that you fulfill
all existing regulations.Your customers demand, as well, that you meet their compliance guide-
lines, which are frequently more rigid than those of legislators.
The analyses performed by your sales and marketing department shows
that your competitors are all compliant. Consequently, you must be at
least as compliant as they are, if you want to survive.Negative messages regarding your inability to comply will not be tolerated
by your shareholders. The good faith of your consumer base is dependent
upon whether you can continue to enhance your brand’s reputation.Given these pressures, it makes perfect sense that so many companies are
investing in environmental, health, and safety compliance solutions. According
to AMR Research’s 2007 IT spending projections, environmental, health, and
safety compliance-related initiatives are the third most important areas impact-
ing future IT investments. It only takes a quick glance at the evidence to see
that the advantages of such investments far outweigh the liabilities.
The sort of comprehensive solution your business needs to step in line with
green directives — one that is integrated into core business processes — will
retrieve required compliance data from sources that are dispersed through-
out your enterprise, automatically determine which data is missing to ensure
strict compliance and minimize risk, and store it in structured form.
Centralizing the data ensures not only that it will be visible and available to
all relevant parties across global operations, but also that the data accessed
is current and accurate. Open standards and flexible communications enable
manufacturers, dealers, suppliers, customers, and regulatory authorities to
speak the same green language. Your IT costs will drop, too, because the
same master data will be used for all materials and products. On the whole,
compliance will be significantly streamlined, thus reducing the time and
effort you spend on compliance efforts while freeing up resources to focus on
other fundamental concerns. This in turn lowers the total cost of ownership.
There are still more benefits to implementing an enterprise-wide solution,
each following from one to the next. For example, when auditors call, you’ll
be able to give them any documentation or reports that they request. As a
result of your tip-top compliance record, the specter of legal fines and other
consequences will vanish. And as soon as the public learns of this, your
image in their eyes and in the media’s will be all the shinier.