What’s your company’s superpower? It could be a technology, a marketing edge, engineering talent, or exceptional service. Whatever your secret sauce is, it’s important in generating your revenue. What could be its kryptonite? Obviously, whatever could harm or stop your superpower would logically be your kryptonite.
It’s also obvious that you want to prevent kryptonite situations from occurring. You visit important customers frequently, pay a lot for marketing and engineering talent and invest in your technology and operations. But somebody always wants to see proof. You do have the critical documentation, right?
It’s easy to say that you have fantastic, long-standing customers with long term contracts. But have you confirmed that those contracts exist and the terms match your ERP? Financial reports depend on the information matching to a very high degree. Many acquisitions and share prices have tanked because the assumption about customer contracts was just a story.
Every large company is approaching the time when the ESG claims they make will need to be supported with actual documentation. Are you collecting that documentation? Is it secure? What documentation would you even need? ESG is just one of many compliance issues that can be a firm’s kryptonite if your claims are found to be more story then fact.
Public companies in particular have compliance issues including stringent financial reporting requirements. These include not only revenue numbers but expenses, assets and liabilities. Every new asset needs documentation. All liabilities need to be documented. Expenses must be recorded and legitimate. And for each of these claims, there are critical documents that must exist.
The kryptonite is easily identified. Its poorly organized document management with no security, no confirmation of existence, no access history, no record of receipt or approval, no protection from accidental deletion, no basic rules of compliance. Absolutely hire good talent and invest in your superpowers. But invest in your critical document archive because ignoring that can be your kryptonite and that could ruin a good story.
Millennia Group provides a workflow and critical document archive solution that supports your business. www.mgdocs.com, info@mgdocs.com, 630-279-0577
