Finding a consulting partner for any business is a big decision in any of its operational domains. Compliance and regulation is a segment that is particularly demanding and strenuous for any business, as it directly affects the entirety of the business’s operations.

A recent survey revealed that enterprises and organizations have to comply with a minimum of 13 IT security or privacy compliances and regulations. The survey also revealed that the average spending on compliance activities for organizations is $3.5 million annually, with 58 working days consumed by compliance audits each quarter.

More and more regulations are coming into effect, urging organizations to mitigate their critical applications, systems, and even infrastructure to the cloud. This significantly increases the risk of the associated impact of non-compliance on organizations. Hence, choosing the right compliance solution partner has become very critical for businesses.

How to Select the Best Regulatory Compliance Consulting Firm for Your Business?

With a multitude of compliance vendors in the marketplace, it might become a hassle to narrow down the list and selecting the most competent product chemical regulatory compliance consulting firm for your business. The main goal of any business in hiring a regulatory compliance firm is to establish a long-term partnership, which results in a seamless compliance process. Hence, it is imperative to have a concrete strategy in place to find the most suitable compliance consulting firm for your business.

To create this strategy, you must evaluate the following elements to match your business requirements for building compliance partnership with a firm:

1. Domain Expertise

The first and foremost thing you must evaluate for a chemical regulatory compliance consulting firm is their domain knowledge in your industry. This will help you in understanding if the firm would fall under the ideal shortlist in your research.

2. Team Background

Many compliance firms offer a sleuth of services under various industries. It is thus, critical to know about the background of the ground team they deploy to take care of your compliance needs. Does the firm hire attorneys, former regulators or CCOs, or former examiners like SECs? This will help you in understanding the intensity of the compliance firm’s subject matter expertise.

3. Tenure of Compliance Firm’s Team

The main goal for any business looking for a compliance firm should be to build a reliable compliance partnership. Hence, it is crucial that you know the tenure of the consultants in the firm, and the average tenure of their employees. Moreover, knowing other metrics like turnover can also prove to be a major determining factor in predicting the longevity of the compliance partnership.

4. Portfolio of the Compliance Partner

This might seem like a generic point to look at, but it is quite important. The current list of their clientele, what the firm has achieved for its clients, what problems they have solved, what tools do they use, do they use any SaaS service to automate and streamline compliance processes, are all the questions that can be easily answered by a well-built portfolio of a potential compliance partner.

5. Openness to Communication

Since you are looking for a compliance partner, it is essential to determine if the firm is capable of being one from the get-go. The compliance firm should be open for availability to communicate based on your convenience. This can be easily determined by noticing the responsiveness of the compliance firm about your queries and assessments during the selection process. Are you receiving swift responses to your emails, calls, and messages sent to the firm? It helps in establishing a comfort level with the firm, which furthermore establishes some trust to form a partnership with the compliance firm.

How to Prepare Yourself For Finding the Most Suitable Regulatory Compliance Firm?

Asking the following questions will help you along to conclusively present your goals and requirements to a compliance consulting firm:

● Which domains does your business has to follow regulations and compliance for – Policies, standard, legal, behaviour, process, etc.

● When does your business need to report or show compliance? Is it a regular cycle, continuous assessment, or a single date annually?

● How does your business need to present its compliance reports? Is it proof of effective surveillance, FFC (Fixed Formal Calculation), proof of record-keeping, or something else?

● Which regulatory bodies or authorities assess the compliance reports?

● What is the form of assessment by regulatory bodies? Is it remote, on-premise via audits or inspections, tests, or something else?

● Who are the designated officers or board managers responsible for the demonstration of compliance in your organization?

These questions will also help your business in developing long-term plans which can be significantly assisted by the partnership with a compliance consulting firm.

Wrapping Up

While the market is flooded with vendors, businesses must be very meticulous in selecting a compliance partner. APA Engineering is a product chemical regulatory compliance consulting firm that offers a multitude of compliance solutions, which are offered under the management of the most competent industry experts across multiple domains. Offering compliance solutions in a diverse catalogue of regulatory compliances, including IMDS, REACH, SCIP, Conflict Materials, and much more,

Bringing in an effective combination of domain expertise, streamlined processes, and software tools, APA Engineering competently elevates the standards of compliance solutions to a new level. Contact us today to get in touch with our SMEs, and check for yourself if we tick off all the boxes in the checklist in this article to make your decision.