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"Corporate Governance is the system by which organizations are
directed and controlled. Boards of directors are responsible for the
governance of their organization” (The Cadbury Report)
Categoric - Solutions for GRC, BAM and SCEM
- Provides a coherent framework for governance needs
- Allows a "joined up" view of assurances
- Supports GRC, Environmental, Social, Ethical and Supply Chain Compliance
- Re-uses the creative design effort as many processes will be similar
- Brokers between internal systems and external partner systems
- Internal Audit wants the business to use it as a control tool!
- Gives both a big picture and a drill down view
- Supports Continuous Auditing and Continuous Monitoring
Similar Frameworks and ProcessesThe concept of what falls under the remit of “Governance” seems to be evolving and broadening as time goes by. Governance, Risk Management and Compliance are already grouped together as GRC, and with the increasing emphasis on non-financial regulation, Environmental compliance, Social and Ethical oversight (along with other yet to be defined areas) could soon be generally included as well.
To get some sort of feel for what this means, AMR Research claim that Environmental compliance requirements on their own dwarf the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in their breadth, scope, and sheer complexity...
Supply Chain Governance
A whole new dimension is added when the requirement for Supply Chain Governance is added to the equation. The modern organization is very complex and has a complicated network of relationships and dependencies with customers, suppliers, business partners, channel partners and distributors etc. This relationship is further complicated by the fact that divisions of the organization itself and the network partners could be geographically dispersed across different areas of the globe.
For a manufacturing company, simply being able to comply with the various customs regulations in different areas could present a significant challenge – for example, WCO Safe framework, AEP, AEO Pa/Pd etc. Expressing a desire to collect data for SLAs measurement and integrating performance criteria around operational improvements could seem rather like masochism…
Commonality of need
The requirement to monitor the organizations activities against a set of defined rules or criteria exists at many levels. There is also a common need to make things happen as a result of certain eventualities – both expected and unexpected – and the preference is to allow this to happen in an automated way if possible (to avoid cost, human errors, delays etc). The output also needs to be published to the stakeholders in a flexible format that suits their particular needs.
Many of the processes will
be similar, and the frameworks selected should reflect the evolving
need for a range of "across the board" metrics. This similarity extends down to the level of the actual design of the process or rule that captures and automates the required action or activity, and the effort used in creating these could be re-used in a number of different areas.
This commonality of need is recognized by Categoric and has prompted the development of their solution for Governance - Accord.
Unified Management Platform Accord provides a coherent and Unified Management Framework for governance needs across the organisation. It can be utilized at a macro level to supply The Board, The Audit Committee and Senior Management or other stakeholders the reporting
output and transparency they need. This means that they can get a high level view of the "big picture" and
drill down on specific feeds to the level of granularity desired.
It can be used by Internal audit , Compliance and Risk management to
support their individual objectives and tasks and can feed and supply
that output to their various teams and other interested parties as and when required.
At a micro level it can be used by Operations to manage the multiple interactions that take place internally and externally, possibly brokering between internal systems and external partner systems to harmonize and automate supply chain processes and govern the interactions between them.
Continuous Auditing and Monitoring
In the context of governance solutions impacting many different areas of an organisation, the area of Continuous Auditing is explored in more depth – what is it, how does it differ from conventional auditing, what are the benefits etc. In the Intelligent Controls Assurance section a distinction is drawn between use and ownership of Continuous Auditing and Continuous Monitoring within the business, and the implications of that difference are highlighted. The sponsorship of Accord by Internal Audit into the business as a tool to achieve operational control is also discussed.
Categoric's solutions
provide the basis for an overall Unified Framework that links the
various stakeholder areas together and allows a "joined up" view of
assurances made towards effective and efficient operations, internal
financial and non-financial control and compliance with a range of laws and regulations.
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