In an industry with increasing demands and fewer resources, managing entities efficiently hasn’t gone away or gotten easier. So CSC sat down with our senior director of Product Management and Compliance, David Jefferis, to give you insight into why companies should consider using entity management software to support secure entity governance.
Why do you think companies should consider using entity management software?
Organizations with an antiquated approach to managing entities are putting their compliance at risk and are missing a golden opportunity to introduce critical efficiencies into their governance program. Entity management software has the power to transform how organizations manage their entity data, documents, compliance events, ownership structure charts, and more. In our current climate where corporate legal departments are expected to do more with fewer resources, an approach to entity management that’s modern and wholistic is more important than ever. I’m a strong believer that the best solution for managing entities involves an integrated combination of service and technology. The right entity management software solution will support secure collaboration and establish a single source of truth for legal entity information.
Can you outline some of the trends and latest developments in the entity management software industry?
Wider adoption, what I would describe as mass adoption of this technology. Entity management software is no longer just common for larger organizations but we’re seeing mid-market and smaller organizations rapidly embracing the technology. Another trend we’re seeing is organizations looking to integrate other technology solutions with their entity management software, such as electronic signature software and human capital management systems.
How do you think entity management software can ease the complex nature of corporate compliance?
I’ll put it this way, I can’t imagine having to generate ownership structure charts, locate entity governance documents, produce officer and director rosters, or keep my arms around critical compliance events that impact my organization’s good standing without a software solution to bring it all together. CSC Entity Management automates visibility around compliance events, allows users to generate org charts with the click of a button, use full-text searching to find documents in moments, easily route documents for electronic signature, and has robust reporting that allows clients to surface and extract data with ease. It’s also an incredibly secure solution with granular permissions so that administrative users can easily control what their users can and can’t see in the technology; this fosters collaboration in a controlled fashion.
Could you expand on how entity management software has evolved to accommodate global companies and companies expanding internationally?
One of the trends we’ve seen over the years is not just an increase in the number of clients with multi-national entity portfolios that use our entity software, but also the volume of international users that access the technology. We’re commonly working with organizations with corporate legal departments and stakeholders that are geographically dispersed across the globe, who rely on CSC Entity Management to function as their source of truth for global legal entity data. We’ve added several enhancements to the platform in recent years including a custom layout feature where clients can track unique information per entity, which could be set up by region or country, the flexibility to view and capture dates in international formats like DD-MM-YYYY or YYYY-DD-MM, and where our platform really stands out is our ability to automate annual compliance events for non-U.S. entities. For clients who engage CSC for our Global Subsidiary Management (GSM) corporate secretary offering, CSC Entity Management combines a robust knowledge base of international compliance obligations and a rules engine that is able to apply that knowledge to a client’s unique portfolio of entities to automatically create global annual compliance calendar events. As CSC handles those events on behalf of our clients, the event status is automatically updated in the calendar for complete transparency, just like we do for the U.S. annual filing events we manage. It’s another key example of the complete integration of our service and technology.
In your experience, what are the ways entity management software makes managing directors and officers easier?
Two of our most recent enhancements speak to this directly. We’re very excited to offer our clients a pre-built integration between CSC Entity Management and the Workday human capital management application. Our clients can enable this secure integration to establish a link between the officer and director records managed in CSC Entity Management and the corresponding employee records in Workday. When changes occur to the employee record in Workday, our entity management users can receive email and in-application alerts about the change. This enhancement supports keeping officer and director data current in a timely fashion, which can impact compliance filings in the U.S. and around the globe. Additionally, the longstanding ability to tie unlimited documents to entities has been expanded with another recent upgrade so documents can now be tied directly to individuals tracked in the Officers, Directors, and Management section. The logical storage of the individual documents will help organizations with Know Your Customer (KYC) due diligence requests and prove useful when the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) reporting requirements go into effect.
Could you talk about what’s next on the horizon for entity management software?
I’ll start by saying that CSC has demonstrated a sustained commitment to enhancing our entity management software over many years based on the feedback we receive from clients and prospective clients. Put simply, we are never complacent. We maintain a multi-year product development roadmap for CSC Entity Management which is regularly evaluated to ensure we’re focusing on enhancements that will make the biggest impact for our clients; our recent Workday integration and the ability to tie documents directly to individuals are examples of this. The next roadmap feature that I’m most excited about is an enhanced document assembly capability. It will enable organizations to maintain a template library in CSC Entity Management, and merge data stored in the platform into their templates to generate documents that can be saved or routed for signature using our existing electronic signature integration feature. Our document management capabilities are already a core strength of CSC Entity Management, and this enhancement will take the feature set to new heights.
Last but not least, what sets CSC apart as an entity management software provider?
There are several things that distinguish CSC in the market, chief among them is the complete integration of our Compliance services with our entity management technology. Data, documents, entity status, and compliance events flow automatically into CSC Entity ManagementSM when CSC serves as a compliance partner for an organization. We’re also unique in that our solution supports unlimited users, unlimited data and document storage, training, and all system upgrades included in the annual subscription for the software. We strongly believe this model allows clients to maximize the benefits of the solution and deploy the software across their entire enterprise, beyond just the corporate legal department.
For more information regarding CSC Entity Management, visit our website.
