Policies

Policies Module

This page contains information to assist our customers with utilizing the Policy module in RegScale. It describes what it is, why you would use it, the benefits, and provides instructions on getting started.

What is it?

A policy is a set of rules, principles, and guidelines that govern operations for a given organization. Common synonyms for policies might include:

• Laws
• Regulations
• Standards
• Procedures
• Protocols

Why would you use it?

Policies are used to govern how activities must be conducted in a repeatable and enforceable manner. Effective policy management ensures that all employees know what to do when and that the organization can improve the repeatability of key processes that may be subject to broader laws or regulations. There are many reasons to perform policy management which include:

• Tracking the lifecycle of policies (date approved, date of last review, expiration date)
• Tracking the implementation of policy requirements
• Identifying non-compliances with policy
• Flowing down policy requirements to vendors and 3rd parties
• Ensuring compliance with applicable laws and regulations

What are the benefits?

A strong policy program results in multiple benefits for an organization; to include:

• Ensuring periodic reviews to keep policies up to date
• Ensuring compliance with requirements to avoid non-compliances, fines, and audit risks
• Improving the repeatability of important processes; especially as they relate to laws and regulations
• Driving continuous improvement
• Reducing third party risk for vendors and subcontractors
• Avoiding fines, loss of contracts, and brand reputation damage

How do I use it?

The policy module in RegScale Community Edition (CE) provides a number of key features that are useful in managing a robust program, to include:

• Flowing down requirements to third party vendors and subcontractors
• Tracking expirations dates and periodic policy reviews
• Scheduling assessments against discrete policy requirement(s)
• Real-time tracking and dashboards
• Automation via our Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• Single pane of glass assignment tracking via our work bench
• Automated workflows for review and approval
• Interactive timeline builder
• Social collaboration via our News Feed (LinkedIn for Compliance) and real-time commenting system
• Secure document and version management with our file upload and encryption system
• Audit history including every view, update, print, email, etc.
• Calendar view to see policies expiring within any given period
• Dashboards, Status Boards, and Score Cards to visualize progress in real-time

For our Enterprise Edition (EE) customers, you get all the great features above, plus we add:

• Ability to create custom fields to extend the schema and build out customer specific data entry forms
• Integration with Microsoft Teams and Slack for real-time collaboration
• Ability to host a multi-tenant version to segregate data by site, customer, organization, etc. to run many different policy management programs with complete data isolation from a single installation
• Real-time interactive dashboard with Microsoft PowerBI AddOn