“If it Wasn’t Documented, it Didn’t Happen”
Without a “Governance Control System” (GCS), Execution and Performance Metrics are Difficult to Collect, Manage and Analyze
What is Governance?
Corporate governance is the system of rules, practices and processes by which a company is directed and controlled. Corporate governance essentially involves balancing the interests of a company’s many stakeholders, such as shareholders, management, customers, suppliers, financiers, government and the community.
What is Governance Control?
Currently, Internal corporate governance controls (internal controls) play a vital role in ensuring the success of a business organization. Internal control activities that ensure proper corporate governance include: Monitoring. internal audits and robust policies.
What is a Governance Control System?
Most governance documents go so far as to in requirements for process and include high level process workflow diagrams. Additionally, they state the need to monitor and/or audit where appropriate. However, what they do NOT do is reference the use of a governance control system designed to manage, schedule, complete, track, document and report the requirements. Without a governance control system, the performance against the value / benefit statements associated with any aspect of governance, cannot be measured, allowing for the determination of effectiveness, either in execution or in terms of benefits achieved. A governance control system needs to manage what we do as well as provide a platform to better understand what we know. A governance control system manages process, workflow, communications and information exchange.
PI Confluence has developed a suite of web based applications to accomplish this end. ICAM is a process / workflow management platform, pSEc is an information exchange / communications platform. The outputs of these two functions are then integrated in a series of dashboards to support analytics associated with both leading and lagging performance metrics to drive improvement.
Integrated Compliance/Conformance Activity Management
ICAM is different from the enterprise business process offerings because it was built w/ domain expertise and all configuration options are available all the time for any process created. These enterprise solutions are primarily successful in the transnational world. Additionally, like the other large providers of enterprise solutions, what was promised as a 12 – 18 month implementations invariably runs 36 months or longer costing millions of dollars in consulting fees.
With ICAM the site admin has the ability to very simply create elements, areas, processes, tasks and responses. Supporting information requirements are easily configured as is the workflow or connecting processes supporting the receipt of inputs and passing on the outputs. To maximize customization potential, ICAM contains 40 systems variables that all YOU to determine how the platform functions, integrated between various business units.
Process Management – A systematic approach to developing an organization’s workflow, allowing for the capture of critical information such as compliance, conformance, decisions and supporting information.
Document Management – Allows documents to be categorized with version control. These documents may include plans, policy or procedures and may be associated with any process as a reference.
User Management – When processes are scheduled, a user is either Responsible, Accountable or the Authority throughout the process. This allows for the tracking and documentation of who is responsible in each stage of the process.
Role Management – Roles are used to control the views and accessibility of different features throughout the ICAM platform from the end user to a company’s site-admin.
Finding / Decision Based Routing – Based on the findings, specific routes are taken through processes to make sure the correct information is recorded properly.
Required Approvals – As mentioned in User Management, a process can be scheduled with a user as Accountable and with another user as Authority giving both the ability to approve or reject the aforementioned process to make sure the correct information is documented.
Communications – Within any process, communications task may be embedded to ensure that the results of the process are communicated to appropriate parties.
Analytics / Reporting – Dashboards can be configured to meet the users’ requirements. These dashboards provide real time text and graphical representation of the status of the processes by user, asset, timeline and many other options.
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Stakeholder Engagement
One of the “Key” aspects of a successful execution of any governance is the engagement of the stakeholders (internal and external resources) whose contribution to the company is directed by this governance. Communications and Information Exchange play a critical role in meeting the requirements of the governance. Having the ability to measure and analyze performance to determine effectiveness supports continual improvement and maximizing the potential benefits of the governance.
Safety Observation and Reporting (SOAR) – both company personnel and contractors have the means of making safety observations. These observations are reviewed and categorized, with their disposition documented prior to hand off to the appropriate party for resolution. During this process, communications w/ the submitter is managed throughout the various stage to ensure they know that their efforts are appreciated and are being addressed.
Cultural Assessment – Surveys designed to capture the perceptions of the internal personnel relative to the state of the culture. These perceptions are analyzed, driving either investigation or validations to determine those areas with highest importance that require prioritized improvement.
Risk Register – As part of the management of risk, engaging internal personnel input in the identification of threats, their severity and any associated consequence, provides a high-level understanding of the business risks, again, to be utilized to drive corrective actions designed to prevent or mitigate them.
Vision – Companies value their vision statement and their strategic goals and milestones, require a means of not only communicating them to internal personnel and contractor, but to measure the stakeholders level of understanding and commitment to them.