No matter what products you develop or where you sell them, regulations are growing quickly in number, scope, and complexity – covering everything from health and safety to the environmental impact of your products. A company's ability to flexibly and efficiently deal with ever-evolving worldwide compliance requirements to protect its revenue and brand is rapidly emerging as a key strategic issue.

According to a 2008 McKinsey study, "Fifty-one percent of executives – up 20 percentage points from 2006 – pick environmental issues as one of three socio-political issues that will attract the most attention during the next five years."* Companies must take regulatory compliance into account during the entire life cycle of their products - from initial conceptualization through development, material sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, and end-of-life.

Software and services from SAP and our partners can help you implement a systematic approach to product compliance, bringing together operational controls and compliance visibility within a single, comprehensive global compliance framework. With SAP, you can protect your revenue and brand, while driving beyond compliance towards differentiation and sustainability by:

• Making environment, health, and safety an integral part of the development process to ensure compliant specifications
• Embedding compliance controls in supply chain, quality management, and manufacturing to minimise product compliance risks
• Implementing compliance checks in sales, distribution, servicing, and recycling administration to maintain life-cycle compliance beyond manufacturing

Solutions for Embedded Product Compliance

Development for Compliance
A successful compliance programme starts where you start, within your core development processes, to give you full 360-degree visibility into all product dimensions including product, recipe, and chemical compliance. SAP provides a robust compliance management solution that supports compliance checks, manages change, and enables accurate reporting to customers and authorities.

Controlling Manufacturing
Manufacturing needs to monitor supplier compliance, control product labeling, safety documentation and provide traceability from raw material to product use. The SAP compliance management solution is natively integrated into SAP's manufacturing and quality management solutions, and as a result, compliance monitoring and tracking becomes a natural part of your supplier and quality management processes.

Life-Cycle Compliance
SAP Business Suite provides extensive compliance check and recycling administration capabilities to efficiently manage compliance through end-of-life. For example, sales can ensure that products are not sold in violation of trade regulations, service can ensure that repairs are done with compliant parts, and finance can accurately settle and report all product and packaging recycling fees.

Most companies realise that compliance is not a one-time task handed to product development. Instead, it needs to be deeply embedded in all processes touching the product. This requires an enterprise-wide, yet flexible, approach. SAP Business Suite provides the environment, health, and safety foundation, analysis tools, process controls, and reporting capabilities. SAP consulting services and our partners can support implementation, helping you protect revenue, build trust in your products and brand, and leverage that as a competitive advantage.

* McKinsey Quarterly, Addressing consumers concerns about climate change, Sheila M. J. Bonini, Greg Hintz, and Lenny T. Mendonca, March 2008