KPI and Collaboration: How Vivint and Agilent Handle Data Collection | Item

Each business must decide for itself which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are most useful in terms of data capture. One KPI that compliance officers need to consider is “takt time,” said Daniel Garen, ethics and compliance manager at smart home company Vivint. Takt time, derived from the German word “Taktzeit” (meaning “cycle time” in English), has traditionally been used as a manufacturing principle but has since made its way into the compliance space, Garen said.

In the context of manufacturing, takt time describes the time required to produce a product that meets customer demand, with the overall intention of creating lean manufacturing lines. In the context of compliance, CCOs will often hear in the course of their work that it takes too long to complete a certain task. Takt Time can help compliance successfully meet a wide variety of obligations, supported by data visualization that can then be presented to management.

“Data visualization does not give [the management team] the answer; it gives them permission to ask the questions, “What caused this?” Is it a problem ?’ Garen said. In other words, takt time guides the business in understanding signals, what those signals are telling them, and why they are important.

Garen used the example of a go-to-market strategy, in which each step of the process takes a different time. Suppose a Distributor has 21 days to complete a Due Diligence Questionnaire and Compliance has four days to return it, but they ended up taking Compliance only one day out of four and took the Distributor the rest. time.

The way to visually display this data or report of data to the business is to present a bar graph showing the desired compliance goals against the requirements imposed on the distributor. next to a bar graph showing the actual time it took for each group. “The end goal is to get the leadership team engaged and make them understand the issues,” Garen said.

Cooperation is the key to this process. “What I’m trying to do is have an iterative and cooperative process with the management team to decide which six visuals to pursue,” Garen said. For example, one might be a bar graph of the number of investigations opened, closed, and substantiated, while another might be a table of numbers showing both the planned budget and the actual budget for the quarter. “So you build all these parts,” he said.

“Data visualization does not give [the management team] the answer; it gives them permission to ask the questions, “What caused this?” Is it a problem?'”

Daniel Garen, Director of Ethics and Compliance, Vivint

The final advantage of having complete, high-quality data is that it leaves little room for backflow. “When you get the data and create the image, you’re going to win every time,” Garen said.

Like Vivint, Agilent Technologies, a US-based analytical instrument development and manufacturing company, also tracks compliance timelines against partner timelines, said Jennifer Dresser, compliance consultant for Agilent’s global channel partners. Other KPIs reviewed by Agilent include third-party monitoring and remediation reports.

“As a quality control of our work, we review reports from case reviewers to make sure our team is responding to any red flags that arise,” Dresser said. This can include partners working in a sanctioned country or politically exposed persons, for example.

“Our due diligence is cyclical,” Dresser said. “We do it once a year, and we have an internal questionnaire that our sales managers fill out. The internal questionnaire dashboards help shape the due diligence questionnaire, data that is then presented to management each year, she said.

Data transparency

To avoid any mistrust in the data presented, it helps to make the process synergistic between the different organizations of the company. This, in turn, fosters even greater collaboration, especially between organizations where there has traditionally been a natural tension, such as between sales and compliance.

At Agilent, for example, business organizations work closely together, “and we’re open with them and transparent about where we get the data,” Dresser said. If compliance reveals red flags, sales see the benefit of not working with a particular partner because of the risks it presents. “They seem to see the value of what we’re doing and are working with us as partners to help guide their strategy in many cases,” she said.

Vivint takes a collaborative approach similar to data production. Garen said he won’t start producing data until he has agreed in advance with the company on metrics that make sense.

Make no mistake about it: Creating data models to create the data visualization part of them is a complex process. “You have so many different legacy systems, and you have to normalize the data and clean it up,” Garen said. “What I hope to see in the future is making it easier to merge all this data.”

Data collection done well, however, offers endless opportunities for compliance. As Garen said, “It’s a long trip, but a trip worth it. When you can make it work, the management team is very happy.