At a high level, we see any organisational compliance programme including these three elements:

1. Knowing
2. Managing
3. Assuring

Whilst none of these are elements are mutually exclusive it is useful (we think) to consider them separately when planning your organisation's compliance programme.

• Knowing is a simple question with a complex answer; “what does the law (and our other legal or voluntary obligations) require me to do?”
• Managing is, now that we know the obligations, “how do we plan, organise, lead and control our efforts to meet those obligations?”
• Assuring, which is often the final question that the compliance function in an organisation asks: “Are we now compliant - have we met our obligations?”

By logical flow, if elements one and two are dealt with excellently, then three should be relatively easy.

Libryo is focussed on providing a world leading solution to the first element of an organisational compliance programme: knowing.

One of the main reasons why the Compliance Officer’s job is not easy, is the factor of reams upon reams of disorganised legislation, different at every location where operational activities occur (whether in one country or across countries), which is also changing all the time.

A recent study by Thomson Reuters stated that “Compliance officers are clearly still experiencing regulatory fatigue and overload in the face of ever-changing and growing regulations.” The study, of over 300 large companies worldwide, discovered that 69% of companies expected regulators to publish even more information in the coming year with 26% of companies expecting a substantial increase.

More than 33% of companies in the study “spend at least a whole day (just less than 10 hours) every week” analyzing and tracking regulatory changes and amendments. There has been no slow down in the amount of regulatory change that companies need to track and be aware of (Thomson Reuters: 2016).

The study also went on to discuss the rise in harsher regulatory penalties for companies and how they manage their risks and obligations. With this rise, personal liability for compliance officers is expected to increase steadily for the foreseeable future. The study also found that 60% of respondents expected an increase in personal liability in the next year with 27% expecting a significant increase within the year. This is a very real challenge for compliance officers and this challenge incorporates all of the three elements of the compliance challenge identified above – knowing, managing and assuring.

At Libryo we believe that if you don’t know your obligations (legal and other), you will only manage what you do know - and this will leave you exposed and liable. Thus, knowing is the foundation of tackling the complexity of the compliance function well.

That's where we can and want to help.

For the manage and assure elements of your organisational compliance programme, Libryo has partnerships with the worlds most innovative and leading governance, risk and compliance ("GRC") software vendors and implementation and assurance consultancies. Libryo, together with this network of partners, provides a full set of enterprise systems and solutions to meet all of the needs of any organisation's compliance programme, tailor-made to suit any scope and budget, anywhere in the world.

Libryo - now you know.