Tuesday, May 27, 2014

2014 Regulatory Changes Impact SMEs

Accounting Today lists nine key regulatory changes identified by Paychex that could have a significant impact on Small Mid-Sized Enterprises (SME). 

 Many SME’s hope to fly under the radar when it comes to regulatory compliance issues. With the drive toward greater transparency and governance practices required by regulators and corporate stakeholders, SMEs must adopt better engagement strategies to incorporate regulatory mandates into the enterprise. 

Regulatory compliance initiatives need not be a check the box exercise. SME’s dedicated to a best practices regimen incorporate regulatory compliance initiatives as an opportunity to implement improvements in operational and governance practices. SME’s committed to a culture of continuous improvement use regulatory mandates to integrate requirements into sound practices as central pillars of effective governance, risk, compliance (GRC) program.

Sound practices are a set of standards and controls that mitigate numerous risk factors in the corporate enterprise. Sound practices address corporate governance, operational and market risk factors, regulatory compliance, corporate citizenship, and stakeholder communications within a set of defined expense ratios. Market leading SME’s effectively ascertain emerging regulatory initiatives to optimize operations to enhance competitive position. 

The Paychex list notes the Affordable Healthcare Act, Defence of Marriage Act, Minimum Wage legislation, Immigration and E-Verify, IRS focus on Revenue Recognition, Retirement Programs, Employment Regulations, Privacy Rights and Data Security, Mobile Technology and Bank regulations. These emerging regulatory concerns need to be thoroughly assessed to determine how they can be incorporated into the company’s business model to create a new and improved value proposition for clients, employees and stakeholders.

A STEEPLE analysis is a useful tool to determine how these emerging issues will impact the SME business model. STEEPLE is an acronym for Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal and Emerging Risk factors confronting the business. A STEEPLE analysis is fully incorporated into Sum2’s S3 app.

Sound practices require that regulatory compliance programs be embraced as a brand building exercise. Corporations that approach compliance by implementing best practice solutions will mitigate reputational and regulatory risk, attract high end clientele, and command premium product margins.

Sum2 believe this to be the case as well. Our clients engage risk as a daily cost of doing business. We design risk management products for small business managers that empower them to lower the odds and consequences of damaging risk events while positioning themselves to be the beneficiaries of opportunities changing market conditions produce. 

Get risk aware and protect your business with the S3 an SME Seismograph, a risk detector and an early warning and opportunity discovery app on Google Play. 



Risk: regulatory, tax, emerging risk, GRC, S3, STEEPLE, AHCA, Defence of Marriage Act, Card Check, Immigration and E-Verify, Minimum Wage, Accounting Today, IRS, Paychex, STEEPLE