A globalized economy, increasing regulatory demands, and an evolving risk landscape are putting unprecedented pressure on organizations across industries to meet the highest standards for compliance.
“We’re starting to see industries outside of the traditionally heavily regulated ones, such as energy and the financial industry, now start to take an interest in developing more robust compliance efforts and compliance programs,” says Andrew Clark, a principal with Ernst & Young LLP’s Forensic and Integrity Services.
Honeywell International is a perfect example. For years, the well-known multinational conglomerate, which specializes in aerospace, building technologies, performance materials, and safety and productivity solutions, invested heavily in compliance efforts, and it was looking to take the next step in becoming best in class from a compliance perspective. Honeywell had a variety of manual processes that the company wanted to automate and digitize to provide a more holistic view and to enhance transparency on its overall compliance performance worldwide, with the ultimate goal of delivering information more quickly to key stakeholders.
“There needed to be a way to effectively communicate to the board, and to our most-senior stakeholders, the effectiveness of our compliance system and status on a regular basis,” says Vic Miller, vice president, deputy general counsel, corporate secretary, and chief compliance officer at Honeywell. “However, the tools we had at our disposal at the time weren’t effective in achieving that goal. They looked at individual data points, but they didn’t provide an overall comprehensive view of compliance.”
Eager to adopt a more proactive approach, Honeywell teamed up with EY forensics professionals to develop a comprehensive compliance framework. The result: an entirely data-driven scorecard that not only provides a consolidated, centralized view of compliance for communicating effectively with senior leadership but also enables Honeywell to drive year-over-year improvements in its compliance approach.
That’s an essential outcome, says Anne T. Madden, senior vice president and general counsel for Honeywell: “Given the ever-increasing volume and complexity of data generated across many different compliance dimensions globally, it is critically important for us to have a digitally enabled and data-driven solution designed to promote actionable insights that are tangible and meaningful.”
This case study examines the strategies Honeywell employed to produce a powerful digital solution consisting of a compliance scorecard assessment and the role that strong leadership, a knowledgeable consulting partner, proper prioritization, and immediate action played in sustaining positive change. It also provides insights that may be helpful to other organizations looking to transform their own compliance programs.