Top Three Reasons Why Screening for Denied Parties in Salesforce CRM Platform is Key for 3rd Party Compliance

The situation is all too familiar. The company’s top sales rep has just completed a detailed dialogue with a prospect, and, believing that this is a five-figure deal in the making, enters the notes into the Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and sets the pending call. There is little or no thought given to screening the prospect against denied parties lists, because that is the job of the corporate compliance team or the legal department.

There are a number of essential questions we need to ask about this scenario. Was the sales rep correct in the assumption that the restricted party screening part of the job is the responsibility of other people in the organization? Should Sales be checking their leads, contacts and accounts against global sanctions watch lists? Could the Salesforce CRM be equipped with the ability to conduct global sanctions and 3^rd party searches on an individual or bulk basis?

The answer to all three questions is a resounding “yes”. Here’s why.

While the rep is somewhat correct in assuming that the compliance people in the company should be handling denied party screening, it is not entirely true. That’s because regulations surrounding compliance is much more onerous than ever before.

Everyone knows that you cannot deal with denied, debarred and blocked persons in business of any kind. But it is not just the export compliance folks or the head of legal counsel charged with ensuring regulations are not breached.

There are detailed compliance rules governing controlled technology, sales and marketing, mergers and acquisitions, financial transactions, human resources, access to corporate facilities and networks in addition to sanctions and embargoes. It can be seen, therefore, that in order for effective compliance, the effort has to be companywide and transcend departments.

From the Sales perspective, there are guidelines that also apply to them. Take the Bureau of Industry and Security’s red flag indicators that includes the following checklist items:

• The customer or its address can be found on a denied parties list;
• The customer is reluctant to offer information about the end-use of what is being purchased;
• The customer has little business background;
• The customer is willing to pay cash when the terms of sale typically involves financing;
• The customer is unfamiliar with the product’s performance capabilities but still wants to purchase the product.

Organizations across industries have to make sure that they are in sync with compliance regulations by screening against sanctions and denied party lists. They should also be aware that restricted parties can reside domestically, as well as internationally, which adds to the complexity of the compliance process.

The highest-level benefit at the corporate level is that compliance with the rules prevents disruptions to the business, including monetary penalties and negative media coverage. It also provides competitive advantage compared with organizations with a less-than-robust or a lack of compliance infrastructure.

For Sales, this translates into early and ongoing detection of denied parties, which in turn means that resources can be focused on legitimate leads, contacts and accounts. We’ve heard the following sales lament many times before – ‘had I only known they were on a government watch list from the get-go, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time with them.’

Integrating denied party screening into the Salesforce CRM platform is one of the key ways to expand the effectiveness of your organization’s compliance initiatives. Properly integrated, here are the top three reasons to be screening in Salesforce:

• Detection of denied parties with automated screening at the start of the sales cycle, flagging potential dubious deals to sales reps at the lead, contact and account levels;
• Detection of ‘bad actors’ as the deal progresses through the sales cycle with automated rescreening, allowing reps to cease activity with a certain lead the moment the prospect is matched to an entity on an official watch list (because denied parties lists are always changing with additions being made as frequently as on a daily basis); and
• Maintaining an automated trail of screening and compliance activities for corporate due diligence tracking and reporting and in the event of a government audit.

Read our white paper to get more detailed information about Performing Effective and Comprehensive Denied Party Screening Within the Salesforce CRM.

Descartes is a provider of an industry-leading suite of denied party screening and 3^rd party risk management solutions, including integration and Salesforce with minimal disruption, sometimes in under an hour.

Descartes Visual Compliance solutions are flexible and modular, allowing organizations to pick the specific and exact functionality and content they need for their particular compliance needs and scale up later as and when necessary.