Salesforce: An Ideal Platform for Global Sanctions, Restricted and Denied Party Screening Compliance

The one secret that is often overlooked amid the initial excitement of a potential new sale is that before the negotiation, renewal or repeat shipment process, organizations need to be satisfied that there are no concerns with the company they are about to conduct business.

Are they on a global sanctions or denied party screening list? Are they located in a restricted or embargoed country? Are there image or reputation issues, especially due to recent negative publicity? These are some of the questions that need to be addressed first. Given the volume of inquiries that can come in on a routine business day, the best way to tackle these questions systematically is with a compliance process and/or third-party risk management technology. But once resolved, the organization’s sales force can press forward with confidence and do what they do best.

Why should you instill sanctions screening early in the sales process? The short answer is that by getting the compliance piece out of the way earlier translates to the sales team not wasting their time later. The worst experience for a salesperson is to get to the point of closing a deal only to find out that they cannot work with the prospect. It’s time and effort wasted.

If you are caught interacting with a prospect on a sanction, restricted, or denied party list, you run the risk of incurring monetary penalties, which in turn may lead to a loss in trust and reputation when the incident is publicized. In fact, studies have shown that the penalty for noncompliance is often more than double the cost of simply maintaining compliance in the first place.

Because of the high penalties of non-compliance incidents, it’s becoming more and more important for every part of the business to handle Restricted Party Screening. That is, it’s no longer purely the work of the legal department or the compliance team.

Multiple departments across the organization all have their own compliance regulations to cover, including:

• Sales and marketing
• Procurement
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Sanctions and embargoes
• Financial departments
• Human resources

Because of all these inter-departmental processes, compliance must be built into the overall culture and operating infrastructure of the company in order to be effective.

Instilling the practice of screening for restricted parties into your sales process has a variety of benefits:

• You avoid the costly fines and other related consequences of noncompliance.
• You have a competitive advantage over other businesses without automated compliance measures in the form of improved customer onboarding and overall experience; and
• You weed out the bad prospects early on so that you can focus only on the legitimate ones later, saving your team's time and effort.

However, some managers argue that such screening practices are too costly and impede the workflow of the sales team. While this notion may have been true at one point, today’s automation-based solutions for handling compliance have largely “outgrown” the drawbacks, ensuring that the benefits are always worth the investment.

The detractors here often point to the time-consuming nature of manual prospect screening checks. Having to slog through all your prospects by hand is hardly a streamlined experience. In addition, if the compliance team only gets to undergo the checks after the sales team has closed the deal, it can seem like a waste to throw it all away at that point.

But today, there are far better ways at approaching compliance in the sales department so that the process does not impede decision-making.

What’s the most efficient way for sales representatives and other stakeholders to integrate the Sanctions List Screening process into the workflow? Ideally, you’d want a CRM that integrates a Global Sanctions Search, such as Salesforce.

Did you know that the Salesforce CRM platform can integrate easily with a sanctioned screening solution like Descartes? This feature is one of the biggest steps you can take to boost your business’s compliance efforts.

Whether you’re looking at Leads, Contacts, or Accounts, Salesforce Screening will enable you to detect denied prospects automatically early on in the sales cycle. The automated nature of the tool means that you will always stay on top of official watchlists, even if they change in the middle of your deals. Automated screening also provides you an audit trail to work with in case of government audits.

Combine the power of the Salesforce CRM with the industry-leading denied party screening functions of Descartes today to ensure peak compliance without disrupting sales workflows. You can tailor the experience to your individual needs thanks to our modular solution.

Also take a look at our white paper for more information about Performing Effective and Comprehensive Denied Party Screening Within the Salesforce CRM or visit our Salesforce screening resource center.

To help manage compliance risk more effectively, Descartes provides a range of denied party screening and 3^rd party risk management solutions, including straightforward integration and Salesforce.

By utilizing our robust solutions, organizations can strengthen their compliance processes, enhance their competitive edge and increase sales velocity.