The distributed and dynamic nature of business makes ethics and compliance a challenge. How does an organization validate it is current with legal, regulatory, and other obligations within an ever-changing business environment? Global compliance in the context of a complex and dynamic business environment is particularly challenging as organizations face broadening anti-corruption laws and regulations. Ultimately, the best offense is a good defense. Organizations must be prepared to show they have a strong compliance program in place to mitigate or avoid exposure to penalties.
While anti-corruption laws vary around the world, the common compliance requirements of these laws are the backbone of any good compliance program. To effectively prevent and detect issues of corruption, bribery, and fraud in international business, compliance has to be an active part of the organization and culture. It is a continuous and ongoing process that must be monitored, maintained, and nurtured. This requires a new paradigm of activity that moves away from reactive fire-fighting to managing, monitoring for, preventing, and detecting corruption and compliance risks.
There are two primary models to manage compliance to anti-corruption obligations: One approach is build-your-own, ad hoc and ultimately labor-intensive, and produces significant manual processes and piles of documents. A more economical approach focuses on software designed to manage the complex and diverse needs of anti-corruption compliance.
