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Workflow and Governance

Overview

The typical scenario, too often found, is that an organisation was experiencing repeated control issues with their procedures and regulatory reporting. In many cases, processes were never documented correctly, are in severe need of updates, or not documented at all. Procedures were stored across multiple drives and locations, some even being retained only in paper form. There was a problem with organisation, consistency, quality and reliability of theses documents. Without the existence of a global template, document formats varied from department to department.

There was no clear system in place for the reviewing, modifying, and approving of procedures. This would continually create the scenario where one department would have up-to-date documentation while others would be far from having accurate and up-to-date documentation that accurately described their current processes.

There was also a lack of connection between the regulations that controlled the procedures, and the procedures themselves. The procedures were not being restructured to keep up with the ever-changing regulatory environment, which caused audit non conformances to be raised and regulatory breaches.

The problems included:

  • enhanced operating and reputational risk;
  • increased expense through inefficiency;
  • inability to satisfy audit points raised in relation to key processes;
  • disparate, inconsistent, or non-existent procedures;
  • inability to locate or identify the most current version of a procedure;
  • procedures not regularly reviewed or updated;
  • no clear process for modifying/approving procedures;
  • inability to enforce the current, approved version of a process;
  • employees and other interested parties unaware of procedure changes;
  • no ties or links between procedures and the governing regulations;
  • senior management unable to meet personal goals and objectives based on Key Performance Indicators (KPI's);

This lack of organisation and central control meant that departments would need to scramble to put together procedures when necessary. On numerous occasions, the organisation had received poor audits from internal departments as well as fines from external auditing bodies due to improper documenting practices.

Service Offering

BCRM has a flexible compliance documentation management and workflow solution (Work Force Director (WFD)) which will help any regulated business to simplify and reduce the cost of maintaining the significant document sets required in large banks.

WFD is a centralized organisational tool that can help systematically control and, organise procedures across a single department or throughout the entire organisation. With WFD, regularly reviewing and updating of your procedures becomes a reality with the help of scheduled reminders and tasks.

Defined roles help maintain a consistent and efficient modification and approval process by allowing verification of validity from the proper authorities within an organization, while notifying appropriate users of the procedure change. Tracking procedure changes and accessing old procedures is made easy with the version update process. As procedures are modified and updated, new versions are published and older versions are retired and archived.

The SEC regulation update service allows the user to be apprised of regulation changes just for the regulations that are of concern to the user. It also alerts management of any regulation change that has been linked to a procedure under WFD control. The users can review the regulation change, review the procedure and determine whether any further action is needed.

Approach

We approach each project in the same manner:

  • definition of the scope of of the project;
  • define and agree the legislation and regulation applicable;
  • understand your business;
  • undertake a risk assessment;
  • perform a gap analysis;
  • agree work to be performed and delivery format;
  • define and agree workflows;
  • produce and agree documented procedures;
  • implement awareness training;
  • ad hoc advice as required;

Benefits

With this user-friendly system now in place, WFD has enabled organisations, and their different departments, to control their own procedures while keeping a consistent format and process throughout the organisation. With WFD now an integral part of their operations, organisations have seen improved efficiencies in the procedure control process and departments no longer need to scramble when auditors are approaching. Specifically, organisations have realised:

  • a centralised repository to store all procedures organised by business unit;
  • a well defined and controlled process for editing, approving, and publishing procedures;
  • links between procedures and regulations and notifications of regulatory and legislative changes.
  • reliable notifications that alert your employees of a procedure change and the requirement that they certify that they have read and understood the changes, providing an audit trail;
  • scheduled reminders and tasks ensuring that procedures are kept valid and accurate;
  • uniform, complete, and current procedures;

Within the Banking Arena, WFD has been used to excellent effect in five global banks, including the largest of US banks.

An addition benefit of this approach is the optimising of business process for continuous improvement.

Next Steps

  • BCRM has a number of other service offering, these are listed here;
  • BCRM is committed to providing a consistently high value service to our Clients;
  • David Lilburn Watson, who remains personally 'hands-on' throughout the process, manages this process.
  • to understand how the BCRM suite of offerings can be used to transform your business, please contact us
  • we look forward to discussing your specific requirements, at your convenience;
  • whatever other type of consultancy you require, we can possibly offer a free Health Check.