A guide to the 5 stages of systemising individual compliance
Systemisation is about moving away from the manual, to make individual compliance possible. But there is a lot of work that goes into making these processes seamless for you in implementation – especially if you have bespoke requirements.
Nevertheless, approaching this process methodically, proactively and with best practice in mind can simplify things greatly. Plus, having a thorough roadmap ensures you leave no gaps or silos that may cause risks in the future. Our team takes a hands-on approach to systemisation in order to support this.
By following these five stages to define, design, and implement a systemised solution, we help our clients do so completely and in a way that aligns with their regulatory requirements.
Use this guide to ensure you are taking a thorough, best practice approach to systemisation.
1.Outline your approach
First, it’s useful to understand what approach to systemisation will work best for you. Do you want to transition all at once, or take a phased approach? Do you have the resources available to move quickly, or would this be too disruptive to your business?
We always take the capacity of the business to manage a systemisation process into account when doing our initial planning. To help this, it’s useful to get an understanding of where you are on your systemisation journey. How much is manual, how much is digitalised, and roughly where do you want to get to?
Similarly, the regime or regulatory requirements you are faced with will affect the process. For example, if the requirements are more explicit, like with our IAR solution, it’s more straightforward to define and implement a solution. Where the requirements are more principles-based, like with our PRM solution, the implementation will be more nuanced and bespoke to your organisation. Therefore, systemisation will take more time to define and complete.
2.Define your requirements
In this phase, we work to understand the problems organisations need to solve. We define practical pain points and evaluate what’s not working, or is lacking, in existing processes. Record keeping, MI data or admin – what are the biggest issues? To do this, we talk to different stakeholders throughout the business to get a complete picture of compliance.
Once this is complete, we can start to map requirements onto specific systemisation solutions and features.
Key actions:
- Workshops with key stakeholders including clients, senior staff, frontline staff and operational staff to understand pain points
- Working with teams to define what best practice means to your organisation
- Monitoring teams and activity to understand existing processes, workflows, and outputs
- Performing backroom compliance audits
- Evaluating metrics and policies
- Exploring where data is coming from, how it’s stored, and what format it’s currently in compared to your systems or regulatory requirements
3.Design your solution
Based on the work done in stage two, we can define your framework, the capabilities and the technical design of your solution.
What tools will you need? What templates need to be created? How do existing frameworks need to be changed to meet objectives a, b and c? Does it work for every department? Are there any remaining silos? Which other systems need to be integrated to fill the gaps in data visibility? We’ll ensure that, moving forwards, data is complete and in the right format for your systems.
Our team also advises on best practice based on our decades of experience in software and compliance sectors.
This is when we can fully map out the timeline for systemisation in detail. This begins by understanding your priorities and revisiting your available resource to outline every action from configuration to testing to completion.
4.Configure and systemise
This is when we create the building blocks that will take you into implementation. With a clear roadmap, we can begin to configure your capabilities. This includes creating bespoke functionalities, building templates, designing workflows, and integrating data feeds to meet your requirements.
We will implement capabilities and processes at regular stages, testing everything thoroughly as we go before finalising anything.
As part of this process, we also provide hands-on employee training. Usually, we focus on key stakeholders, such as senior managers or team leads, who can cascade this down into the business. Nevertheless, we do everything we can to empower user adoption throughout the organisation.
This process is ongoing and open to collaboration. Capabilities are often subject to change as we review things in situ. Overall, testing the system against your KPIs to ensure it meets your requirements is our objective.
5.Implement and review, dynamically
The final stage is implementing your complete framework into your business as a live solution. Of course, regulation is always changing, so this isn’t designed to be static. We work hard to be proactive about adapting to regulatory changes during the consultation stages.
Our support team is also always on hand, even after implementation. You’ll deal with the same person that you have had supporting you throughout the process, making the transition completely seamless.
They are continuously working with you to improve your solution, but we also implement customer feedback into our overarching development plans.
We’ve led many leading organisations in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere through systemisation. Book in a call with us to discuss what systemisation could look like for you, and how it can help streamline, add visibility to and reduce risks associated with your compliance processes.