Furniture |
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Municipal |
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IT |
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Other Industries |
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An Environment of Scrutiny |
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Almost universally, businesses are facing an increased environment of scrutiny, with standards applied and monitored either by legislation or by self-imposed compliance to an association or industry benchmark. In all cases, compliance with those standards requires tracking and monitoring over time, and on-demand reporting of progress or attainment of the standard.
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Asset Management & Compliance
KiSP has worked with many companies in a variety of industries to help them to establish baseline inventories and the processes required to maintain compliance over time. Asset Management best practices are used to give companies not only the confidence they need to satisfy the reporting requirements, but also a system by which they can derive additional management benefit, including cost savings, increased information security, improved planning and decision-making, and superior internal customer service.
Let’s look at some of these standards and which KiSP solutions are available to help achieve compliance.
| Standard | Brief Description | Industry/ Vertical Affected | Compliance Type | Asset Type Affected | Information Type | KiSP Solution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sarbanes Oxley | To improve quality and transparency in financial reporting and independent audits and accounting services for public companies | All (U.S) publicly traded companies | Legislated | Financial | SnapTracker (furniture) gariston (all other asset types) |
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| PSAB 3150 | Prescribes the accounting treatment for tangible capital assets of all levels of local government | Canadian Municipalities | Legislated | Financial | gariston™ municipal | |
| HIPAA | United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act - Physical Safeguards - controlling physical access to protect against inappropriate access to protected data | Healthcare (US) | Legislated | Confidential Information | SnapTracker (furniture) gariston (I.T.) Design Services (layout) |
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| FISMA | Federal Information Security Management Act is meant to bolster computer and network security within the Federal Government (and affiliated contractors) by mandating yearly audits | US Federal Government Departments and associated contractors | Legislated | Confidential information | gariston | |
| LEED | The LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings | Building (US) (Similar standards in various jurisdictions) | Voluntary | Environmental | SnapTracker (furniture) Design Services |
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| PCI DSS/P3P | Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard version 1.1 is a set of comprehensive requirements for enhancing payment account data security; P3P is a machine-readable vocabulary and syntax for expressing a Web site’s data management practices. Taken together, a site’s P3P policies present a snapshot summary of how the site collects, handles and uses personal information about its visitors | Anyone who accepts payment cards over the internet; anyone who needs/wants to collect personal data from web site users | Industry | Payment Account Data Security; Personal Information | Ensync™for authorized Steelcase dealers | |
| ISO 9001 | A generic set of requirements for implementing a quality management system | All industries (global) | Voluntary | Quality | gariston | |
| ISO 14001 | A generic set of requirements for implementing an environmental management system | All industries (global) | Voluntary | Environmental | gariston | |
| CSA Z142 | Code for Punch Press and Brake Press Operation: Health, Safety, and Guarding Requirements | Manufacturing (presses), Ontario Canada | Legislated | Health & Safety | gariston |
Much of the regulatory environment in North America focuses on the capture of true asset value for the purposes of balance sheet accuracy, and, in some cases, like public sector organizations, may even be tied to budgets, grants, and other funding. For most publicly traded companies, asset data is captured, at least at a rudimentary level, at the time of purchase, but some organizations face the prospect of creating a record of fixed assets for the first time, and may feel forced into it by the regulatory or industry compliance environment.
These laws have allowed accounting departments, facilities managers, and their suppliers to critically evaluate their systems and processes to determine how well they are able to capture data on assets, track movement and changes, determine value, and dispose of assets at the end of their lifecycle.
For industry or association compliance, the reporting requirements may not be so stringent, but for large or complex environments, the process to gather and track data may be no less challenging.
Types of Compliance, their associated issues, and how KiSP helps
| Asset | Type of Compliance | Asset Capture, Tracking or Management Issue | KiSP Solution | The way KiSP’s solution helps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Furniture | Fixed asset accounting | What to capture, how to assess its value. | SnapTracker | By integrating with business systems, SnapTracker can assign the allocated business unit, capture the acquisition cost of the asset, track refurbishments over time, and provide detailed reporting on inventory value. |
| Health Information | SnapTracker | When SnapTracker’s best practices are applied, data on asset attributes including dimensions, condition codes, and styles can be captured, enabling queries and reporting on specific assets that meet/do not meet specified standards | ||
| Environmental | SnapTracker | Fully configurable, SnapTracker can capture required manufacturing material data at time of acquisition and instantly identify inventory of compliant furniture. A full lifecycle management solution, SnapTracker identifies items that can be refurbished, recycled, donated, or disposed of, thereby minimizing environmental impact of old or surplus furniture | ||
| Data Security | Ensync™ | As the e-commerce engine behind Steelcase’s eBusiness initiative, Ensync provides specific tools, procedures and best practices to help dealers manage PCI DSS and P3P compliancy efforts | ||
| Infrastructure (Municipal) | Fixed asset accounting | gariston municipal | gariston municipal was developed specifically to help local governments to identify and track all infrastructure related assets, using handheld PDAs, GIS location technology, and web services to integrate into provincial or state run tabular and spatial data repositories | |
| IT | Fixed asset accounting | gariston | By integrating with business systems, gariston can assign the acquisition cost of the asset, track upgrades over time, and provide detailed reporting on inventory value | |
| Health Information | Data Destruction | gariston | Rules-based, gariston establishes protocols for the identification of old or surplus IT assets and processes for the proper destruction of hard drives. Only once these processes are verified as performed by accountable users does gariston create a physical record/ certificate of the destruction and disposal of the asset | |
| Environmental | Disposal | gariston | As an asset lifecycle management solution, gariston can help identify IT assets that are nearing the end of their lifecycle and establish workflow procedures that prepare the asset for hard drive erasure, refurbishment or repair (and subsequent redeployment), donation, and, as a last resort, disposal, thereby minimizing landfill impact |
Data Capture
Capturing data on the identification and condition of fixed assets is central to the establishment of a database of relevant financial data for compliance issues. The key issues are:
- The definition of fixed assets as they relate to the legislation and to the business
- The classification of assets for consistent data capture and data integrity
- The system for identifying the asset for future ongoing data capture (visual only, bar code, RFID, GPS)
- The identification of the location of the asset
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