Author:  Jason Victor | i-Sight Director of Solutions & Support| Jason is one the original developers of the i-Sight solution and now leads the i-Sight IT & Support groups. He’s been involved in over 150 i-Sight implementations including global implementations at Dell, Coca-Cola, AllState, Siemens, DSGi and many others.

Ensuring Compliance in a Decentralized Org. Structure

Companies operating globally face a growing number of employee relations and compliance related challenges. The most important challenge is their ability to adapt to local laws and cultures, while ensuring company-wide adherence to standards developed at head office.  In order to operate on a global scale, many organizations have employed a decentralized structure.  Although this is an effective strategy for enabling rapid decision making and customization of product & service offerings, it presents a significant challenge for compliance and HR professionals.   More specifically, we’ve seen many clients empower their local HR teams to investigate employee complaints or reports of misconduct.  This is a great approach, however I believe there needs to be centralized oversight for two major reasons:

1) Identifying Repeat Offenders: As employees move from one position to another, they will often move to an entirely different organization – within the organization.  If an incident is only reported to the regional HR group, there’s no way to communicate an employees history to the other regions.  I was recently speaking to a client who told me of an employee who was moved around 5 times in as many years.  In each new job, this employee’s misconduct was reported to the regional HR group for investigation.  Disciplinary action was taken in each case.  The problem however; is that there was no coherent record of their misconduct.  The disciplinary action should’ve been increasingly severe with each infraction; however, it wasn’t possible due to the lack of case history.  If taken to court, this would be a difficult pattern of misconduct to defend and the organization’s inability to discover the pattern could be seen as negligent.

2) Identifying Potential Corrective Measures: Centralizing misconduct reports and investigations enables a global examination of trends that’s not otherwise possible.  When each region acts as an island, it’s impossible to identify global trends or take advantage of “serendipitous” discoveries.  Most of our clients report at both a regional and global level.  A key reason to centralize employee relations data is unintended pattern discovery.  Using advanced analytics across the entire data set enables executives to identify global trends and take appropriate corrective measures.  This may lead to re-writing of policy or providing enhanced training in certain areas.

Social Media and the Viral Impact

Thanks to the Internet and social media, a local workplace incident in one corner of the globe can very quickly become a public relations nightmare back home.  Consumers expect that companies operating globally are doing so in a manner that’s consistent with the values they represent at home.  There’s no excuse for failing to remain up-to-date on global laws and cultural norms.  Although a company may have a viable defense in a court of law, the court of public opinion operates under a different set of rules, and the power of this court has become equally powerful.  Although consumers may not issue fines or directly infringe on a company’s autonomy, they can seriously impact the value of the company.

HR departments must provide a timely response to every allegation.  We often address these issues with our clients in a couple ways:

1) Record Every Allegation: Have local HR teams enter every complaint or report of misconduct – regardless of the perceived credibility.  Even if every report isn’t investigated, the data will help form the global view we are looking for.

2) Categorize Risk Potential: Every allegation should be assessed for risk.  This doesn’t have to be overly scientific, but certainly a simple dollar value or category selection (high, medium, low) enables executives further up the chain of command to easily maintain visibility over high priority investigations.

3) Use Workflow Alerts: When a new case is entered in i-Sight, notifications are sent to the appropriate levels and information is now available, and current, for those who need it.   i-Sight uses automated workflow alerts that are triggered based on a combination of case related factors – including geographic region, allegation type and risk potential.  Alerts can also be used when milestones, regulatory or otherwise, are not met.  This helps bring attention back to the investigation.

All of the recommendations above need to be done while maintaining privacy and clearly documenting each stage of the resolution process.  Documentation must be completed to meet court requirements, should the case end up in front of a judge.

Power of Collaboration

Homegrown systems that rely on spreadsheets, MS Word documents and emails just don’t cut it.  I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing first hand the power of collaboration.  Although the Internet has raised the stakes by giving consumers a louder voice and a platform for rapidly sharing news about corporate malfeasance, it has also added to the arsenal of tools available to investigative teams.  By centralizing information in an electronic case file that’s available 24 / 7 to any authorized user within the organization, investigators are able to collaborate with their peers & managers to more readily obtain invaluable advice.

In this shared environment, security needs to be robust and granular enough to maintain privacy.

Conforming with Global Privacy Laws & Regulations

This topic deserves a post of its own, but here’s an overview from the Rutgers Journal of Law & Urban Policy entitled “Binding Corporate Rules for Cross-Border Data Transfer”.  This was published in 2006, and I’ll try and find an updated version when I write about this topic more specifically.   In brief however, there must be safeguards in place to ensure the treatment of personal customer or employee information is consistent with the laws of each country or region.

Real Time Reporting Across the Entire Organization

Finally, when all is said and done, executives and managers require access to aggregated information in order to identify trends and take appropriate actions. To meet the needs of today’s executives, spreadsheets, standalone databases and emails introduce an unacceptable lag in reporting.  Information needs to be recorded in a consistent manner across the entire organization to enable effective decision making.

Ethics, compliance and a plethora of other workplace related issues make their way into the news on a daily basis. With the number of employees reporting fraudulent activities or observed misconduct at record highs, what are you doing to make it easier for your team to manage their cases and investigations?

A growing trend in ethics and compliance is the switch to an integrated risk, investigations, and compliance case management software. Many human resource and investigation departments are seen as laggards when it comes to the use of technology.  These departments often use Excel Spreadsheets or ancient homegrown Access databases for case management or reporting systems.   This sort of solution limits a teams ability to collaborate on cases, and doesn’t easily adapts to changes and updates to laws and policies governing workplace ethics and compliance, such as Sarbanes-Oxley. With the need to conduct efficient and accurate workplace investigations, companies must focus on using tools that will provide them with consistency during the investigation process and when producing reports of findings once the investigation has concluded.

The Benefits of Case Management Software

Web based solutions, such as i-Sight Investigation Software, make it easier for you and your team to collaborate on investigations, manage case workflow and avoid cases from falling through the cracks or falling behind in completion time.  In a study conducted by Forrester Research Inc., it was concluded that an investment in technology based ethics, compliance and investigation case management systems and software has provided businesses with positive impacts such as:

1. Efficient Processes:

With increasing pressure to conduct high quality investigations in shorter periods of time, investigators and HR directors need to use tools that help them streamline process and reduce error. i-Sight Investigation Software allows you to establish workflow rules and due dates for cases. If a case remains inactive for a set period of time, e-mail notifications will be sent to those dealing with the case in order to bring their attention back to the issue and complete the case in the required time span. i-Sight features such as centralized case management and the ability for others to collaborate on cases at the same time help move the process along efficiently. These capabilities make it easier to manage your team and increases you efficiency in case completion and reporting.

In the article “Maximize Your GRC Technology Investment“, they discuss the findings from the Forrester study that show the ability for technology to improve efficiency amongst business functions when using a case/ investigation management system:

“Customers cited process automation as the core value of their GRC platform implementations. Workflow management capabilities help keep everyone on task, and centralized content management and reporting reduce the need to jump back and forth between different systems. In addition, ongoing improvements in automated controls and control-testing functionality generate even greater efficiency gains. A manager of corporate compliance for a large pharmaceutical company told Forrester: “Managing all GRC initiatives in one platform saves time, resources and money.”

2. Improved Cooperation Between Business Functions:

Investigations require the cooperation of a variety of people within your company, as well as the ability for your practices to comply with established legislation and legal frameworks governing the playing field in your industry. Regulatory drivers like the BSA, Patriot Act, Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley have created a demanding mandate for financial institutions. i-Sight is the solution that will enable you to protect your brand, ensure compliance with regulatory demands and improve efficiency of investigations

In the article “Maximize Your GRC Technology Investment“, they discuss the findings from the Forrester study that show the ability for technology to improve cooperation between business functions when using a case/ investigation management system:

“Converging the various efforts of those involved in risk and compliance efforts fosters cooperation between business functions. An operational risk management director for a large financial services company said that one of the biggest benefits of implementing a GRC platform was the ability to “integrate the risk disciplines, including internal audit, SOX and compliance.”

3. Process and Reporting Consistency:

i-Sight uses reporting templates that allow for consistency in the reports generated at the completion of an investigation. i-Sight pulls the data from the case and fills in the template, allowing your investigators to save a lot of time reporting on the investigation findings. Providing your employees with access to real time information is crucial.  The i-Sight report writer doesn’t require extensive training and enables “non-technical” users to quickly create reports through a simple drag and drop web interface and report creation wizards.

In the article “Maximize Your GRC Technology Investment“, they discuss the findings from the Forrester study that show the ability for technology to improve consistency among processes and reporting when using a case/ investigation management system:

“Getting everyone to use the same processes and methodologies is difficult. GRC platforms allow organizations to create standard templates for documenting and assessing risks, controls, incidents and other elements. Consistency also leads to convergence and efficiency and is often an initial driver for the development of a GRC program. The director of risk and compliance for a top high-tech company told Forrester that one of the most important values of GRC technology was the creation of a “consistent way to manage compliance, operational and risk management projects.”

Factors to Consider

Transitioning to the use of technological solutions for your case management and investigations efforts requires significant planning. In the article “New Years Resolution Number 6 for GRC Professionals: Embrace technology” posted on the “Inside GRC” blog, Bruce McCuaig states that “If your practices are bad, automating them won’t make them better. Automating the wrong thing does not make it righter.” Before making the switch, you will want to make sure that you remove any barriers in the workplace or within your policies and procedures that would hinder the success of using technology for case and investigation management.

McCuaig also writes that the following should be considered when finally deciding to embrace technology as a GRC tool:

• Use technology to streamline GRC activities, but consider eliminating some
• Make sure the technology isn’t blocking processes, make sure it enables the sharing of knowledge and works with you to improve the investigation process.
• Use technology to create searchable knowledge on all risk and control information:
  • Can you find all your data security risks with a single query?
  • Can you find all your control “gaps” with a single query?
• Use technology to allow fact based enterprise GRC reporting on risk and control status.
  • Can you tell your GRC stakeholders what’s new, different, better, worse, emerging or changing from a GRC perspective?
  • Can you do it in real time?
• Use technology to provide assurance and accuracy when handling all matters.

Businesses cannot afford the costs associated with workplace theft, lawsuits and unproductive processes or employees. The same applies to investigators and the investigation process. How much time do your investigators spend completing paperwork and filling out reports? How much time does that leave them to be out in the field, conducting interviews and moving on to the next case?

The longer it takes investigators to close a case, the more expensive the investigation becomes.  Executives and managers are looking for efficient investigation tools that save time and money.

The issue of time is a growing concern for those involved in internal investigations. Businesses are also faced with growing legal pressures to start investigations promptly and comply with a growing list of policies and procedures, in order to reduce or eliminate the company’s liability in the case.

Common Questions

Many of the people we speak with about implementing i-Sight want to know more about how they can save time and better manage their cases. A lot of the answers to these questions come directly from our clients.

Investigation Paperwork

One of the major concerns is the amount of time investigators spend filling out the paperwork that’s associated with an investigation. You need to have all the facts in order to determine an outcome, but sometimes having to record the same information over and over again and e-mail it around to your team can make for a lot of wasted time. At TriZetto, ”the old system they were using made it difficult to ensure that consistent entries were made by every investigator and accidental errors could overwrite previous entries. These challenges made the data difficult to analyze. In Excel, one little spelling mistake or a blank space can throw things completely out of whack when you try to sort, or filter the data.”

Collaboration

These methods also make it impossible for multiple team members to work on a case simultaneously, as the files can only be updated by one user at a time. This increases the time it takes to complete an investigation because other members on your team are left waiting for pieces of the investigation to be sent to them in order to complete their tasks. With i-Sight, we help you eliminate this kind of duplication of effort and enable everyone to access and collaborate within a central case file. Profiles, cases and personal information you have previously recorded about people involved in the investigation are saved into the system and are recognized and automatically populated so that you don’t have to record everything all over again.

Accuracy is another important consideration that we are frequently asked about. At the West Virginia Insurance Commission Fraud Unit, “before implementing i-Sight, the lead investigator would sit down and manually go through all of the information in a file in order to write up a summary. It was very time consuming, which meant that people often got frustrated and took shortcuts. With i-Sight, you just press a button and the system spits out a complete written report. It saves a lot of man-hours and eliminates duplication of effort. Also, the final result is more accurate.”

Time Saving Answers

Not only is the data easier to access with i-Sight, but the level of detail is much richer, too. Once a new case is created, the i-Sight system guides users step-by-step through a series of drop-down entry fields that have been customized to conform to any client’s existing workflow while ensuring accuracy and efficiency. Entering a new case takes only a few minutes and requires little specialized training. From that point on, automatic reminders and alerts help to ensure that case records are always kept up-to-date and that individual investigations aren’t neglected or overlooked.

At TriZetto,  ”our investigations proceed more efficiently, our clients get better information, our senior management is better informed and I and my staff have more time to devote to operational responsibilities by using i-Sight.”

To request a free demo and learn more about what i-Sight can do for your business:

i-Sight is web based investigation software for more effective case management and reporting.  Many of the companies we speak to are trying to decide between building a system, buying on-premise software or using a hosted investigation software solution like i-Sight.

We’ve been hosting software to manage customer complaints and investigations for more than 11 years and the attitudes towards SaaS solutions have changed dramatically over that time.  More companies now realize that the Total Cost of Ownership related to on-premise software includes much more than implementation and licensing fees.

Forrester Research recently published a report, “The ROI of Software-As-A-Service” (We’ve embedded the report below), where they describe the generally accepted benefits of the SaaS model, but they also highlight a couple of key difference makers in determining ROI for a given application type.

According to Forrester it comes down to ease-of-use, which means companies can spend less on training and will achieve higher user adoption rates.  Higher adoption rates lead to greater ROI.  We speak to companies who don’t like the idea of a recurring fee, however Forrester points out that for many application types the SaaS model leads to lower TCO over the long-term.  Companies using SaaS solutions are able to reduce hardware and data centre costs, IT support/ staffing, eliminate upgrade and maintenance fees and over the long-term their total cost of ownership is actually lower than on-premise software solutions.

The SaaS advantage

On premise software is more expensive to deploy and maintain than SaaS solutions.  SaaS solutions like the i-Sight Investigation Software eliminate capital expenditures; reduce IT personnel costs associated with implementation and ongoing support and enable businesses to pay-as-you-go.  Most traditional software involves a very large upfront license fee and annual maintenance costs that generally exceed 20 percent of the original license fee.  i-Sight eliminates this upfront cost, enabling business to quickly realize a return on investment.

Web-based software is safer

With i-Sight your data is backed-up daily and stored on secure, always updated, enterprise level servers in a state-or-the-art, highly secure data centers.

With traditional software employees save data on their desktop, laptop or USB drives.  Laptops are stolen, desktops aren’t backed up properly and it’s difficult to keep up with security patches and updates.

Everything is together in one place

You can’t leave information in the wrong place or on the wrong machine.  All of your data is stored in one place and accessible from any computer, any time.  Safe, secure, password protected, and encrypted.

Your data is automatically backed up daily

All your data is backed up every day.  Backups are stored in multiple locations to ensure data is never lost.  We run regular restoration tests to ensure that in the event backups are needed we can quickly get you back up and running.  Since our first day in business, over ten years ago, we have never lost any data.

Your data is safe and secure

Our world-class data centre has guards on duty 24 X 7, bio-metric locks, chaperon only access to servers and 24-hour video surveillance.  Our software and hardware are regularly updated to ensure we are using the latest security patches.  All network traffic is routed through enterprise-class firewalls to keep your information safe.

There’s nothing to install – ever

You already have everything you need to start using i-Sight today!  There is nothing you need to download or install on your computer or network.  Just like your banking site, you simply log in to i-Sight using your web-browser.

Everything is “compatible”

Traditional software requires that you have the matching operating system or that your IT group support the software “platform” it’s built upon.  Because i-Sight is hosted, web based software it works on any platform with a web browser and an Internet connection.

Work from home, or work on the road

With i-Sight, your office is everywhere.  You can access all you case information from work, home, the road or a hotel room.

Useful Links for More ROI Info.

i-Sight Security, Reliability & Privacy Whitepaper

i-Sight ROI Analysis

Here’s the report ”The ROI of Software-As-A-Service” as published on DocStoc:

The ROI Of Software-As-A-Service –