The role of the entity management system in underpinning modern governance practices is, by now, well established. Smart legal operations teams know that to get ahead and remain compliant with the ever-increasing burden of global regulation, they need to constantly be on top of their own organization’s movements.
The big question is: How do they actually achieve this compliance utopia? With a plethora of entity management systems on the market – and many more non-specific software pledging they could do the same thing as an entity management system if you would only configure things in a certain way – it becomes the role of the CTO, General Counsel, legal operations, and compliance and governance teams to work together to identify the system that is right for their organization.
Many of these decisions made today lean toward choosing Diligent Entities as the system of record for compliance, governance and entity management. In this article, we’ll look at just some of the reasons why that’s the case.
How did Diligent Entities become the provider of choice for so many companies?
Diligent Entities enjoys a 98% customer retention rate, with half of all customers coming from Fortune 1000 firms – that’s half of the world’s biggest and most successful organizations choosing Diligent Entities to drive their compliance and governance practices. Here’s six reasons why that choice gets made:
To establish a single source of truth
A lot of pressure is put on the data we use to make strategic decisions in business, which means it’s important to ensure the data accessed across the organization is the same, can be trusted, and is accurate and up to date. A single source of truth must be established to drive efficiency and enable strategy.
Diligent Entities helps organizations to centralize, manage and effectively structure their corporate record to better ensure compliance, mitigate risk and improve decision-making through establishing a single source of truth, a trusted place to access real-time and accurate entity data and rest assured that strategic business decisions are being based on the best available information.
To drive better collaboration
That central repository also acts as a beacon for better collaboration. When all parties involved in entity management can access the same data, documents and information from the same place, the result is not only more efficient operations, but also better collaboration between parties. Having that single source of truth can help to break down operational silos within an organization, and can also ensure any third parties, such as registered agents or other stakeholders, are able to collaborate seamlessly with their counterparts in-house – no need to worry about version control or if this is the right and most up-to-date version of a contract.
To gain actionable insights
By integrating data from multiple business units – including legal, tax, finance, treasury and compliance – into a single system of record for corporate governance, organizations can interrogate better quality data and analyze the strategic position to gain actionable insights. Using Diligent Entities can help organizations to gain a competitive edge by delivering the right information, analytics and insights to spot risks, act on opportunities and turn insights into action. This is only possible with a single source of truth, and with a central repository enabling better collaboration and breaking down internal silos.
To secure the corporate record
Modern organizations – whether they operate in the cloud or they are fairly analog in approach – face cyber threats every day. Yes, even those that haven’t turned to modern governance practices still face security issues, as threat actors can attack company websites and create other reputational risks without breaching the company firewall.
Cybersecurity, and how it’s managed, can ultimately affect the value of a company, and so it’s become incredibly important for both boards and compliance managers to take the security of the corporate record seriously. Breaches don’t have to come from external sources – something as simple as an email being accidentally sent to the wrong person can lead to a leak in confidential corporate information – and so organizations must ensure strong cybersecurity practices across the board.
The Head of IT and the CSO have a role to play in securing the corporate record. Diligent’s products are backed by world-leading security standards, with secure data centers located across multiple regions and countries.
To enable modern governance practices
Corporate governance is changing. The digital age requires a new approach; paper trails and on-site storage of files will no longer cut it in terms of security or ease of access. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, corporate governance has moved from a hands-off, let-it-be approach toward a much more regulatory-driven environment.
In this global world of heavy regulation and reporting requirements, the modern governance organization requires easy access to real-time information; it needs visibility into operations so that it can provide the transparency required by global regulators; and it needs tools that make keeping on top of all the moving parts, deadlines and risk easy and efficient.
Diligent Entities and the wider suite of cloud-based governance and compliance tools empowers business leaders with the technology, insights and processes their organization needs to govern, endure and thrive in the digital age.
To access the Governance Cloud
One of the big points of attraction for many CTOs and in-house security specialists is the seamless integration between Diligent Entities and the rest of Diligent’s suite of governance and compliance tools. Deploying Diligent Entities alongside Diligent Boards creates the Governance Cloud, an all-in-one ecosystem for governance and compliance.
In the age of modern governance a suite of tools like the Governance Cloud allows the safe exchange of data and documents between the two systems, mitigating the risk of potential data leakage that can come from exchanging documents by email and company-wide collaboration tools. The Governance Cloud also delivers access to a secure file-sharing platform, eSignatures tools and more to help protect the corporate record and enable better collaboration.
Diligent Entities can drive your compliance and governance needs, too
While its importance is long-established, entity management software can come in many flavors. Diligent Entities stands out from the crowd for all of the above reasons, and more. Get in touch and request a demo to see for yourself why so many organizations have chosen Diligent Entities to drive their modern governance processes, and set them on the path toward efficient and stable operations, as well as long-term growth.
