Phase 1 - Business Discovery
This phase of the project focussed on understanding the client business to establish the applicability of Acts / compliances. Comprehensive information were collated via in-person interviews / meetings / discussions with key stakeholders in the company. The following items were collated:
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Business Set up ( Entities, Sub-Entities, Locations, Number and Nature of establishments, Employee Strength)
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Products & Services (Type of products manufactured in various plants)
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Internal Compliances ( ISO9001, international standards among others)
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Types and Nature of Establishments
Phase 2 - Compliance Applicability Assessment
TeamLease Regtech identified a lot of equipment at various plants. Examples are Pressure Vessels, Hoists & Lifts, Diesel generator, Fire extinguishers, Gas cylinders, among others. This equipment requires a variety of licenses, registrations, permissions and approvals for installation and on-going operations leading to applicability of different Acts and Compliances.
Our Client was a private limited company and a number of secretarial events and other non secretarial events were also applicable. They had 13 plants across India , hence Factories Act and various other Acts under EHS also became applicable.
The team identified over 155 applicable Acts with over 6,080 applicable compliances including time based and on-going compliances.
Over five hundred licenses, registrations, permissions, consent to operate orders, approvals were identified. A gap assessment was done and it uncovered several critical gaps between statutory requirement and actual requirements which were to be met by the company.
Phase 3 - Implementation
This phase is the longest and the most critical phase of the project. During this phase, TeamLease Regtech assigned a 4 member team of subject matter experts to work with the client’s project team. This phase lasted about 16 weeks during which the following items were accomplished:
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Creation of a comprehensive list of Acts and Compliance for the entire group
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Review of identified Acts and Compliances with respective department heads
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Map the Client Organisation (Group, Entities, Sub-Entities, Locations, Departments)
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Discussion on identified gaps with department heads and compliance head
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Mapping of Compliances to specific users along with their roles
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Hands on training sessions with user groups based on their locations and roles
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Activation of system for a predetermined go-live date
TeamLease Regtech team downloaded the mobile Apps from App store and Play store on the user’s devices. A total of 198 users were identified across the organisation mapped to performer, reviewer, approver and management roles.
In Conclusion
For TeamLease Regtech, this implementation was one of the most complex. Due to growth on account of M&A, there were serious cultural issues in appreciating the risks surrounding poor compliance across different divisions. On one end, there were multi-national mandates, on the other, there were paper based, people dependent practices on mail and spreadsheets.
In essence, our client had a broken compliance program with no centralised control or reporting framework. In a few months since implementation, the client has reported a significant improvement in their organisational compliance program. They have seen a common understanding around risk and governance emerge. Management is starting to manage by measurement. Compliance officer is empowered with information to make appropriate interventions. His non-productive time has reduced by over 90%.
TeamLease Regtech team is working closely with the client to provide post-implementation support. The mobile app has helped adoption greatly. Our client is now on top of all the legal and regulatory changes within 24 hours of the release of the notification.