By: Simone Bernardi, Anders Ekman, Celeris AB
A simple use case
Imagine you became responsible for the regulatory compliance of your organization. How would you proceed to attain and maintain regulatory compliance? In what tools would you invest? How would the end-to-end process look like? What if you were also expected to reduce the time and cost to attain and maintain regulatory compliance?Broadly, regulatory excellence can be understood as having an efficient and effective tool-supported process for maintaining the regulatory compliance of an organization. Regulatory excellence entails a well-tuned combination of tools, tasks, artefacts, and roles and would not only ensure compliance but would also offer competitive advantage.Regulatory excellence also includes effective interaction with external stakeholders, such as regulators and industry peers. See for example Coglianese (2015) who presents a regulatory framework within the Oil industry.
Regulations and requirements management
Regulations are nothing else than a set of (regulatory) requirements which adds to the long list of requirements that an organization and its product must adhere to. There is a multitude of examples in history of how poor requirements management can have devastating effects. Similarly, dozens of financial institutions have received massive fines from local regulators for failing to stay compliant with financial regulations. The amount and frequency of the fines has increased in the aftermath of the 08/09 global financial crisis. Hence efficient and effective requirements management become essential.
Requirements management and regulatory excellence
Certain industries (for example medical device, automotive, and aerospace industries) have had regulations as an intrinsic part of their operation for decades, and over time mature practices have emerged. Other industries, such as the financial industry, might lack the regulatory tradition and history of the abovementioned industries but have on the other hand a great potential to turn the regulatory challenge into competitive advantage.
References: C.Coglianese (2015), “Listening, Learning, Leading: A Framework for Regulatory Excellence”, PPR, University of Pennsylvania Law SchoolSource: What is regulatory excellence and how to achieve it? | LinkedIn
