Regulatory compliance is a form of best practice

I see even the politest person`s hackles rising when I say that regulatory compliance is just a form of best practice. That`s because no one is enjoying the trouble and cost of ensuring they are compliant with new corporate governance requirements. And, in a recent issue of "Big News for the Business Owner", the opinion was aired that new corporate governance regulations are a form of big brother interference that will make it impossible for small and medium-sized businesses to operate profitably.

It`s ironic that a quest for integrity and transparency should produce so much resistance. But maybe we`re just looking at this whole compliance thing from the wrong angle.

Isn`t it really about learning from other people`s mistakes, about not re-inventing the wheel - and, thereby, keeping oneself out of financial trouble? After all, if you want to build a bicycle - you would first find out how other people have done it and then copy them. Sure, you can add new bells and whistles if you feel inclined. But, generally, you`d save yourself the trouble of creating something utilitarian from scratch.

Why? Because it`s more cost-effective, you get results faster and, critically, you get something that works the way it is supposed to. In fact, you should get something that works the best way possible.

Which is what best practice is all about. Most often best practice is simple common sense. But we humans are not renowned for doing the common sense thing in all areas of our lives at all times. Limited experience, time, knowledge or patience make us do things the hard way. Which means that most businesses are probably doing a lot of what they do the hard way.

But now we have ISO standards, King II and the Information Technology Information Library (ITIL) - to help us save time, effort and money.

ITIL is an interesting one, because it is focused on the IT industry, but its principles and strategies are applicable to most other areas of business. In other words, if you adopt ITIL procedures in your IT department, you can migrate them very easily to other operational processes.

ITIL is a set of pre-written strategies and procedures for running a corporate IT function. It covers aspects from development, through system delivery, availability and maintenance, all the way to support of the system through help-desk and other services. It consists of a set of reference books written by acknowledged industry experts, commentators, practitioners and theorists.

The question is, though, what strategies, processes and procedures do you want to or should you perpetuate? Part of the answer lies in those parts of your own business that are operating efficiently. Find out why they work so well and then replicate the successful concepts enterprise-wide. If, for example, you have an efficient, service management-oriented IT service delivery process, take the same principles and apply them to HR, finance, facilities and any staff supporting revenue generation and customer service. All of which will pretty much ensure your corporate governance is up to snuff.

Even so, you may still not be running the right kind of business. What`s the point, after all, of running the world`s most efficient horse-drawn carriage business when everyone is driving cars? You need to know what your customers want and how to give it to them - and that involves best practice, too.

Simply put, best practice is a case of understanding who your customers and suppliers are, both internally and externally, and then recognising how what you do impacts positively or negatively on their ability to do their jobs effectively. (Which is also a pretty neat description of corporate governance principles.)

Access to data is also key. Yet few companies spend much time integrating or presenting data to other parts of the business in order to improve both processes and the speed and quality of decision-making. (And isn`t corporate governance all about ensuring the right people have the right information at the right time?)

So start the process of becoming compliant with governance regulations in your IT department. Because it`s easier there. For one thing, if all your systems are running properly, you`ll not only get the data you need when you need it but you`ll be able to automate the reporting of that data. Suddenly corporate governance becomes a much less onerous burden.

In addition, ITIL (IT best practice) already exists. You don`t have to follow it slavishly. In fact, you shouldn`t. ITIL is only a set of guidelines, so you need to apply it in the way that is most appropriate and beneficial for your organisation. But the point is that there are indeed guidelines. You don`t have to spend time and money working out how to make systems compliant with regulations. It`s all been done for you. And, better still, you can enforce and automate compliance in the rest of the company through your IT systems. In that sense, IT is in fact an in-house regulator that can be everywhere and monitor everything all the time.

Even better news is the fact that off-the-shelf applications are becoming ITIL-compatible. For instance, our category leading service management solution, HEAT, and our new IT Service Management solution product suite are both verified by Pink Elephant - the world`s leading consulting and training provider in the ITIL best practices framework. Such applications can save you the trouble of implementing ITIL yourself.

Which brings me back to the fact that regulatory compliance is just another form of best practice - and actually much easier and cost-effective to implement than you thought, as long as you use a little common sense!