Unsustainable compliance

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Research in the Irish market by HP has shown that current approaches toward achieving regulatory compliance are unsustainable.

Perhaps most disturbing among the report’s findings is the fact that many senior executives in Ireland seem to be unaware of the potential for IT to support, integrate and automate compliance procedures. Other significant findings were that compliance projects are often process more than results driven, leading to time consuming and difficult implementations, and that most compliance processes are manual and labour intensive.

Managing director of HP Ireland, Martin Murphy, said that HP viewed the results of the report as a potential opportunity. “We asked if there was a new market here”, said Murphy. As the results showed that companies were still experiencing difficulties and seemed to inadequately educated as to the role IT can play in easing the implementation of compliance, Murphy said that companies such as HP could lead the way in bringing their own experiences to bear for benefit other companies. HP was among the first companies world wide to implement Sarbanes-Oxley, said Murphy, and so it has experience on a global scale.

Murphy said that HP developed a programmatic approach to compliance, as opposed to a set of point solutions that narrowly addressed individual aspects. This allowed the company to reduce the costs of compliance year on year and allowed it to become an ordinary part of business procedures. “Organisations need to find ways to keep pace with a regulatory environment that demands strong IT governance practices, including more stringent corporate policies and processes, without draining IT budgets,” said Murphy. “By automating traditionally manual processes HP saw a massive 80% reduction in time spent on the audit from 175 hours to 35 hours,” said Murphy. These savings are expected to reach 50% this year.

The report, reasoning based on HP’s own experience as well as the findings in the Irish market, advocates a three stage programme to approach. The methodology comprises three stages to achieving compliance. Firstly, the assessment of compliance needs and immediate action to comply with the most recent legislation; secondly, the creation of an active, integrated process that builds the foundation of good IT governance and finally, a continuous, sustainable programme that ensures continuous compliance and delivers business growth and competitive advantage.

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