Compliance Spending Can Improve Customer Service, Claims IT Consultant

Recent reports suggest that UK companies are spending up to 15% of their IT budget on complying with ever increasing regulations and not enough on improving customer service. According to David Porter, head of security and risk at IT consultancy,

By None

Recent reports suggest that UK companies are spending up to 15% of their IT budget on complying with ever increasing regulations and not enough on improving customer service. According to David Porter, head of security and risk at IT consultancy, Detica, it does not have to be a case of one versus the other – the two can go hand-in-hand if managed correctly.

Porter comments: “It’s true there has been a dramatic increase in legislation and regulation for organisations with Basel II, the Proceeds of Crime Act and Sarbanes-Oxley to name but a few. This does not automatically mean, however, that productivity levels will fall; indeed, if handled correctly, compliance can impact positively on customer service in terms of access to a valuable pool of customer data. What is clear is that a greater degree of coordination is needed between in-house risk management and marketing initiatives, and this should start happening now.”

In addition to potentially diverting money away from business development, compliance measures that intrude upon a customer’s privacy, introduce additional complexity or delay service, have the potential to downgrade the customer experience. On the other hand, these measures can also bring rewards in terms of acquiring, storing and extracting business intelligence from data.

“If marketing managers get more involved to soften the ‘iron fist’ of compliance, whilst risk managers get more engaged in marketing to ensure that risk avoidance is designed into new products and services, then both can benefit. Compliance could be more cost effective and customer relationship management could improve due to better business intelligence,” concludes Porter.

«