The Indian electronics market is one of the largest in the world and is expected to reach $46.54 billion by 2022. Increasing electrification in rural areas, per capita income, penetration of internet and telephony among others have lead to an increase in demand for electronic products in the country. In addition, favourable business policies & Make in India have also played an important role in the market growth.
Our Client is a leading manufacturer of UPS systems, Home Power Products, Special Power Systems, Energy Storage System and Power Distribution Systems. Its products are used for SME and SOHO segments, Business, Residential and Office applications, CNC machines, Medical Equipment, Industrial Automation, and Communication Equipment.
The company has two headquarters in Mumbai and NCR. They have 13 manufacturing plants, 12 Warehouses, over 200 Sales offices, 50 Area Offices & 100 Branch Offices spread across 29 states and 1 UT. The company has over 3,000 employees & 5 divisions in India.
Our client had grown rapidly in India via mergers and acquisitions. As a result, there was really no organisation wide compliance process and reporting structure. Each division was managing things on their own. Management really had no central and consolidated view of residual risk arising out of delays. The company had designated a company secretary at one of the headquarters to manage the compliances across a very complex organisation. However, the compliance officer had day to day challenges in managing compliance operations. Some of the key challenges are as given below:
Too many missed compliances
No central and credible status report for all compliance status across the organisation
Spreadsheet and email based compliance tracking with different formats and different level of detail for each division
Frequent conflict and finger pointing in case of statutory notices / cases
Lack of one comprehensive list of all applicable acts and compliances across the business
No access to timely and accurate legal updates along with impact assessment to their business
Missed items for continued ISO and other international certifications
Our client needed a compliance automation solution that could provide them better control over their environment. Their management was keen to bring greater transparency and common process across different divisions. They were also looking to track all their internal compliances, certification requirements, insurance policies, legal cases / notices, contract etc on a common platform.
TeamLease Regtech Engagement
TeamLease Regtech engaged with the client in October 2018. A team of 2 SMEs was constituted to work with the Compliance officer. The team spent two weeks at their headquarters based in NCR and Mumbai and interviewed their leadership & Management to understand their business and compliance requirements better.
The implementation of AVACOM (TeamLease Regtech Compliance Automation Solution) was concluded in March, 2019.
Client Facts
Part of Multinational Group
Grown by M&A in India
13 manufacturing plants
Present in 29 States & 1 UT
155 Applicable Acts
6,080 Compliances
198 Users; 16 Management Users
16 Weeks to go live
Phase 1 - Business Discovery
This phase of the project focussed on understanding the client business to establish the applicability of Acts / compliances. Comprehensive information were collated via in-person interviews / meetings / discussions with key stakeholders in the company. The following items were collated:
Business Set up ( Entities, Sub-Entities, Locations, Number and Nature of establishments, Employee Strength)
Products & Services (Type of products manufactured in various plants)
Internal Compliances ( ISO9001, international standards among others)
Types and Nature of Establishments
Phase 2 - Compliance Applicability Assessment
TeamLease Regtech identified a lot of equipment at various plants. Examples are Pressure Vessels, Hoists & Lifts, Diesel generator, Fire extinguishers, Gas cylinders, among others. This equipment requires a variety of licenses, registrations, permissions and approvals for installation and on-going operations leading to applicability of different Acts and Compliances.
Our Client was a private limited company and a number of secretarial events and other non secretarial events were also applicable. They had 13 plants across India , hence Factories Act and various other Acts under EHS also became applicable.
The team identified over 155 applicable Acts with over 6,080 applicable compliances including time based and on-going compliances.
Over five hundred licenses, registrations, permissions, consent to operate orders, approvals were identified. A gap assessment was done and it uncovered several critical gaps between statutory requirement and actual requirements which were to be met by the company.
Phase 3 - Implementation
This phase is the longest and the most critical phase of the project. During this phase, TeamLease Regtech assigned a 4 member team of subject matter experts to work with the client's project team. This phase lasted about 16 weeks during which the following items were accomplished:
Creation of a comprehensive list of Acts and Compliance for the entire group
Review of identified Acts and Compliances with respective department heads
Map the Client Organisation (Group, Entities, Sub-Entities, Locations, Departments)
Discussion on identified gaps with department heads and compliance head
Mapping of Compliances to specific users along with their roles
Hands on training sessions with user groups based on their locations and roles
Activation of system for a predetermined go-live date
TeamLease Regtech team downloaded the mobile Apps from App store and Play store on the user's devices. A total of 198 users were identified across the organisation mapped to performer, reviewer, approver and management roles.
For TeamLease Regtech, this implementation was one of the most complex. Due to growth on account of M&A, there were serious cultural issues in appreciating the risks surrounding poor compliance across different divisions. On one end, there were multi-national mandates, on the other, there were paper based, people dependent practices on mail and spreadsheets.
In essence, our client had a broken compliance program with no centralised control or reporting framework. In a few months since implementation, the client has reported a significant improvement in their organisational compliance program. They have seen a common understanding around risk and governance emerge. Management is starting to manage by measurement. Compliance officer is empowered with information to make appropriate interventions. His non-productive time has reduced by over 90%.
TeamLease Regtech team is working closely with the client to provide post-implementation support. The mobile app has helped adoption greatly. Our client is now on top of all the legal and regulatory changes within 24 hours of the release of the notification.