It Compliance And Controls: Best Practices for Implementation

Part THREE. IMPLEMENTATION

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

——Charles Darwin

CHALLENGE

Organizations today face an international and domestic swarm of requirements and mandates that are thrust upon them with varying degrees of necessity and impact. In an effort to equalize markets and maintain a fair market, governments shift existing regulations or introduce new works to establish consistency and assurance in operations, both public and private. These efforts have accelerated as organizations have shifted from small groups of owners to a wide variety of international stakeholders.

In parallel with the extension of ownership to stakeholders that may include private equity funds, hedge funds, state-sponsored pension funds, or even the central banks of countries, business supply chains and operations are becoming more intertwined.^[97] Nearly a half century after integrated supply chain and near-real-time supply efforts were introduced, organizations today work in real time with dozens of companies supporting any number of business functions. These business partners and affiliates demand, as they should and so should you, respect for their intellectual property and the integrity of their operations, and have established contractual protection to ensure these leading practices are in place.

The challenge at hand is that leading organizations and a majority of the firms that conduct business beyond their ...