Regardless of the industry or vertical, organisations have a huge amount of compliance obligations that must be followed to avoid penalties or closures and ensure continuity of service. How are these compliance obligations managed, and is there any room for improvement?
Traditional compliance management
Traditionally, observations and measurements have been captured using manual, paper-based forms. These forms have proven to be difficult and complex to use, and often suffer from inaccuracies as a result of these inherent problems.
Data collection and management with paper forms can be an inaccurate and labour-intensive process. Data is often key punched twice and then reviewed for missed, out-of-range, or erroneous responses — an inefficient validation process that can be time-consuming and inaccurate.
Handheld Computers, A Feasible Alternative to Paper Forms for Field Data Collection, University of Minnesota
Luckily, these paper-based forms quickly got replaced by their digital counterparts as soon as these alternatives became available. This move to digital forms solved many of the problems paper-based forms suffered from and proved to be much easier to use. Better data entry, less use of paper, and a reduced cost are only some of their features.
While digital forms revolutionised the process of being compliant, they did not come without a cost. The recorded data has to be stored and shared with the relevant regulatory bodies for review and sign-off, which sounds simple in theory but has shown to be rather difficult in practice. Records can be erased, servers can become corrupted, data formats change and data loss can become a huge issue for businesses. Organisations are now beginning to harness new and emerging technologies to solve these issues and ensure transparency and compliance.
Enabling compliance using blockchain technology
Blockchain technology has been deemed to be critical for the future of data storage by some, and for good reason. It introduces features like immutability, security, and decentralisation, allowing organisations to verify events, timestamp actions, and ensure real-time compliance.
Blockchain is starting to gain adoption and momentum, as new high-powered protocols have emerged. Some of these protocols no longer have transaction fees and are capable of handling much more transactions per second than previous protocols, to support enterprise-grade applications. The potential of blockchain technology seems boundless, but organisations need to be practical in selecting a chain that meets both their compliance and regulatory obligations.
Europechain by Zaisan is a perfect fit for businesses that have security, compliance, and performance on their requirements list. Europechain delivers trust by allowing organisations to harness the power and scalability of robust blockchain technology while complying with EU legislation & regulation.
Process Timestamping
A process timestamping tool like FACT by Zaisan manages business processes, captures proof of compliance, and tracks procedures. FACT delivers a versatile toolbox for the recording of events from a wide range of predefined smart form templates.
The flexible template builder enables the configuration of all types of checklists, including compliance checklists. These checklists are cryptographically hashed and time stamped on Europechain to increase security, visibility, and transparency. In addition, roles and activities can be assigned to enable task distribution and increase management awareness of task completion.
FACT is a multi-industry application with an intuitive user interface, allowing for fast and efficient onboarding. Furthermore, FACT has flexible team settings to facilitate the segregation of tasks.
Below are just some of the use cases for FACT.
- Real-estate technical inspections
- Food safety and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) compliance
- Equipment maintenance-checks
- Asset tracking
- Road-safety management programs
- Lean-six-sigma routines
- Supplier/contractor-performance management
- Safety management
FACT provides businesses with the opportunity to minimise repetitive, paper-based tasks and maximise the efficiency of employees, with the added benefit of having all events timestamped and added to Zaisan to ensure transparency and completion of time-sensitive tasks. The feature-rich system also allows for visibility through notifications and the reporting dashboard, which can aid in providing insight into team performance and task delivery.
Key takeaways
- FACT is a highly flexible, blockchain-based, mobile tool to manage business processes, capture proof of compliance, and track procedures
- FACT provides businesses with the opportunity to minimise repetitive, paper-based tasks and maximise the efficiency of employees
- FACT offers multiple uses cases, including -but not limited to- HACCP compliance, compliance management, asset tracking, safety management, and many others
- Europechain is a perfect fit for businesses whose priorities are security, compliance, and performance
