The new rules of compliance: combining performance management and compliance to solve the regulatory puzzle, simplify management and reduce costs.

The word "compliance" can make any business cringe, especially public companies and contact centers in teleservices, healthcare, banking, insurance and other regulated industries. And it's no wonder. Governing agencies seem to issue new regulations every day, from every direction: FCC telemarketing rules, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPPA, GBLA requirements, etc. Most of these regulations are ambiguous and come with little regulatory guidance on how to define them in a clear and consistent manner.

Many companies, therefore, must interpret guidelines on their own and attempt to manage compliance issues accordingly, which may or may not keep them in the good graces of the regulators. Alternatively, some companies engage consultants and pay expensive fees upfront to avoid exorbitant fines for non-compliance later. As Richard Gincel writes in "The Awful Truth About Compliance" (Infoworld, Dec. 8, 2005), "According to AMR Research, U.S. public companies will spend $6 billion complying with Sarbanes-Oxley this fiscal year [2006], which will pay for staffing to consultant fees to mail archiving software."

But trying to decipher and comply with complex guidelines is only one piece of the regulatory puzzle. Adding to the problem for thousands of organizations are disparate data systems, interaction systems and processes that not only make compliance programs difficult to manage, but drive up the already staggering costs of meeting regulatory requirements. Case in point? One compliance vendor recently pointed out that many of the companies they serve now spend as much as 50 percent of their annual IT budget on addressing regulatory issues, in particular Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404, which requires a business's compliance processes to produce certifiably correct data.

That's the bad news for many businesses, since compliance will remain a daunting task for the foreseeable future. Yet there's also good news to achieving compliance success. By taking some practical, straightforward measures to combine compliance processes with performance management--and to converge data systems and interaction systems--regulated companies can gain tighter control of their compliance programs and reduce program costs significantly at the same time.

Performance Versus Compliance: Measuring The Similarities

With regards to a contact center environment that includes formal as well as informal agents, the aspects of performance management and compliance management are actually quite similar. As we've done in the comparison table here, the first step toward merging the two management processes is to identify the key points of each and gauge how they match up. Every point you associate on both sides of the ledger gives your organization a stronger framework for implementing a new compliance program or improving an existing one.

Interpret Regulations

Once you've determined a program framework for performance-compliance management, the next step is to designate staff to interpret and understand the regulations with which your business must comply. Consultants can help unravel complex regulatory guidelines to start, and can also refine your program framework as needed, although their service fees can add up quickly if used on a continuous basis.

Remember, too, that the various knowledge levels of agents and associated personnel in a contact center further lend themselves to regulatory issues. Because contact centers historically have a higher rate of turnover than most businesses, regularly scheduled training programs for new and existing employees alike can lead to a more consistent understanding of compliance among all employees.

Integrate Compliance-Performance Programs Into Your Business Processes

Given the similarities of compliance and performance, and to make both management processes more fail-safe and cost-effective, consider building in process control points along with departmental audit procedures, security and ongoing training programs to ensure adherence to those control points. Doing so will also make it easier to integrate all performance-compliance processes within your everyday business processes, based on the following program elements for your staff and the data and interaction systems they use.

Program elements impacting staff

* Compliance implementation team with direct lines to management to approve all policies;

* Clearly defined criteria for a successful compliance/performance management program;

* Clear policies for compliance and performance per department, such as telemarketing, sales, customer service, etc.;

* Documented compliance criteria and expectations for agents and supervisors, communicated up-front;

* Documented workflow and control points throughout the compliance process;

* Consistent compliance and performance "scripts" or response management tools for agents and other affected users, such as business users who serve as informal agents;

* Agent-supervisor training program for compliance quality and performance issues; and

* Departmental auditing program.

Program elements Impacting systems

* Implement an integrated rules engine that handles all media types to manage inbound as well as outbound customer phone calls, e-mails, Web chats, faxes and other interaction types;

* Capture all interaction media types and associated customer identifiers, both for performance and compliance review;

* Offer real-time tools such as agent scripting, screen pops, etc. to meet compliance and performance criteria;

* Provide response management assistance for all media types, not just phone calls;

* Incorporate security provisions such as encryption to ensure the integrity of archived information;

* Use score card-based agent/user scoring and reports to understand compliance issues from a staffing perspective; and

* Update performance/compliance work-flows in conjunction with the rules engine on a continuous basis: the ability to respond to updated regulations or interpretations in a timely manner is always critical.

Reassess Your Data Systems And Interaction Systems

The analysts at Gartner say it best in their report on Client Issues 2005 (Mar. 29, 2005): How to Achieve Regulatory Compliance and ERM. "Disparate and complex systems provide contextual data (from media such as e-mail, instant messaging, text documents and graphics) in every firm. The lack of rules and procedures to consistently capture and manage content in such media is a source of regulatory risk. The disciplines of records management, ECM and workflow are directly relevant."

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Call hindsight 20-20, but many organizations unknowingly amplified their regulatory risk by building out data systems and interaction systems years ago when compliance wasn't an issue. Fortunately, multichannel contact management systems like the Customer Interaction Center (CIC) from Interactive Intelligence make it possible to manage multimedia interactions as well as data from a single communications platform and "rules engine"--which reduces the risk of non-compliance for the inbound/outbound multichannel environment by replacing traditionally disparate systems. For compliance insurance plus enhanced performance, the CIC system offers integrated features including rules-based recording, agent scoring, screen pop, desktop screen capture, real-time supervisory monitoring, interaction tracking, and database and knowledgebase integrations for comprehensive performance-compliance management.

The Benefits Of Combined Performance-Compliance Management

In addition to reducing costs by combining programs and eliminating the ongoing need for expensive consultants, joint performance-compliance management in the contact center allows a single team to monitor performance criteria and oversee compliance issues simultaneously. Compliance therefore is "built in" both to the business process and agent performance review, along with consequences.

Advanced event-by-event monitoring, tracking and scoring features such as those in the CIC contact center application suite "rules engine" also reduce non-compliance incidents, leading to hard dollar cost savings from improved compliance tracking and auditing results, and due to associated savings over disconnected data and interaction systems.

Joseph A. Staples is Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Interactive Intelligence Inc., a global developer of software for contact centers and the enterprise since 1994. The application suites from Interactive Intelligence have long provided out-of-the-box functionality for performance as well as compliance management, and today remain proven solutions for regulated organizations worldwide. Contact Interactive Intelligence at 317-872-3000 voice and fax, or visit www.inin.com.

Performance Management               Compliance Management

Documented standards/policies        Documented standards/policies for
  for performance requirements         compliance program(s)
Contact center manager in charge     Executive-level manager in charge
  of quality and performance           of compliance review and
  adherence                            adherence
Frequent staffing changes            Frequent staffing changes
  (supervisors, agents,                (management and staff) require
  business users) require ongoing      ongoing compliance training
  orientation and training programs    program
Varying skill levels affect          Varying skill levels affect
  performance reviews and              compliance reviews and
  consequences                         consequences
Control mechanisms to improve        Control mechanisms to manage
  performance that doesn't meet        non-compliance issues internally
  requirements
Security and encryption to avoid     Security and encryption to avoid
  tampering                            tampering
Management audits to ensure the      Management audits to ensure the
  integrity of performance             integrity of compliance program,
  measurement systems                  per department
Multichannel customer contacts       Multichannel customer contacts and
  and multimedia interaction           multimedia interaction
  management                           management; managing resulting
                                       data
Storage of multimedia recordings     Storage of multimedia recordings
  to measure performance on all        to ensure compliance on all
  media types                          media types
Role-based access to performance     Role-based access to compliance
  data for review                      data for review
Supervisor-agent scorecard           Supervisor-agent scorecard system
  system to report performance         to report compliance and
  and manage historical                non-conformance issues
  background data