Internal Communication in Vendor Companies

I received a very interesting question the other day that, I believe, warrants more discussion. The question pertained to how vendor companies are handling the process of collecting and then dispersing compliance requirements to all necessary parties within their organizations. The main concerns are that compliance information is not always received timely, not always updated in their organizations timely, not interpreted by associates properly, or not being followed as required.

This certainly evokes other questions of importance that essentially every vendor should be asking:

• Do you have a process in place for obtaining compliance requirements for all of your trading partners?
• Once you obtain these requirements, how are you communicating updates and changes to affected departments/associates within your organization?
• Is the process you have in place effective and if not, what are you doing to "seal the cracks"?
• Is the process you have in place easy to use for those who must respond to the actions that must be taken?

Furthermore, what are your peers doing that you can implement to make your process easier and/or more efficient? Are there software applications out there that can address this issue?

Over the years, many of you have been kind enough to share your solutions with me. The best ones I’ve encountered are the password protected websites or intranet sites that some vendors are using for internal communication. Essentially, the vendor has a website set up that associates within their organizations have to check on a regular basis (similar to how vendors have to check retailers’ sites now). The sites often house full copies of their retailers’ guides, internal instructions on systematic or procedural changes that must take place, etc. To monitor site traffic, a log-in report is provided to vendor compliance and follow up can be done if certain associates aren’t logging in regularly. It is also possible to implement this type of thing to lesser degrees such as via a dedicated share folder in Outlook or via a share drive on your company's network. Another successful avenue is the implementation of weekly meetings with the various departments responsible for the PO to cash cycle (or beyond, if necessary) to go through all things compliance related. Usually a master list of assignments is kept and each item is updated as to status every week.

Additionally, I'd like to note that there is no longer a limitation on Clearinghouse access; you can now set up as many people in your company as you’d like for Clearinghouse alerts. The more people in your organization that are "in the know" about compliance requirements, the better. Might as well get them hot off the press!

So, what are you doing to address this in your company? Do you have a process that works or a solution you can share? Please do!