{"id":7810,"date":"2023-05-16T12:52:49","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T12:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/blog\/is-it-still-possible-to-carry-out-a-regulatory-watch-on-an-excel-sheet\/"},"modified":"2023-06-20T09:27:29","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T09:27:29","slug":"is-it-still-possible-to-carry-out-a-regulatory-watch-on-an-excel-sheet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/blog\/is-it-still-possible-to-carry-out-a-regulatory-watch-on-an-excel-sheet\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it still possible to carry out a regulatory watch on an Excel sheet?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the essential tasks of the HSE function is to keep a <strong>constant watch on changes in regulations relating to the company&#8217;s activities<\/strong>. Many HSE managers still use Excel to manage this aspect of their work.<\/p>\n<p>However, with the advent of new technologies and dedicated software, it&#8217;s logical to ask whether the use of a simple Excel spreadsheet remains effective and relevant for managing increased monitoring flows and dealing with all aspects of regulatory compliance.<br \/>\nIt is now widely recognized that digitization, i.e. switching to a web application and databases, leads to considerable savings in terms of time and financial costs.<\/p>\n<h2>The advantages of Excel for regulatory monitoring and compliance<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<h3>Simplicity<\/h3>\n<p>Microsoft&#8217;s office suite software is almost 40 years old, so it&#8217;s certainly easier for many people to work with this familiar spreadsheet program. What&#8217;s more, learning to use a new tool may discourage some employees, as it adds to their workload.<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>Flexibility<\/h3>\n<p>The well-known spreadsheet can be customized in a number of ways, giving the person responsible for regulatory monitoring a great deal of flexibility. In fact, the HSE manager will completely adapt his tool to his way of working. What&#8217;s more, the software makes it easy to review and correct these errors.<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>The cost<\/h3>\n<p>Integrated into Microsoft&#8217;s Office suite, companies who already have this license won&#8217;t have to invest in a new tool for regulatory monitoring.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The disadvantages of Excel software for regulatory monitoring and compliance<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<h3>The weather<\/h3>\n<p>Time spent on Excel is a real problem when it comes to regulatory monitoring. In fact, designing a regulatory watch strategy in Excel is very time-consuming: there are many regulations, sometimes exceeding a thousand lines. The time spent on this tool can really represent a huge loss for the HSE watch manager, who is often alone, exhausted by this task and unable to attend to the other parts of his job.<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>The risk of error due to the number of lines<\/h3>\n<p>For a typical industrial site, environmental regulations combined with occupational health and safety regulations represent over 300 texts and therefore some 16,000 requirements to be examined. Each requirement is placed on a line in an Excel spreadsheet, and the HSE manager has to check his site&#8217;s compliance with each of these requirements. It&#8217;s easy to understand that the risk of error is high on a simple spreadsheet, where it&#8217;s easy to lose track.<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>Lack of automation and overview<\/h3>\n<p>Each requirement in the text has to be checked by hand, and each action plan to remedy the non-conformity also has to be created &#8220;manually&#8221; each time, wasting a lot of time for the person in charge. It is not possible to create scenarios or automate certain checks.<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>Lack of overall vision<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s obvious that on a spreadsheet of over 15,000 lines, there&#8217;s a serious lack of overview and data consolidation, especially if the site belongs to a Group. Of course, it is possible to create associated graphics, but the work will have to be redone each time there is a change in regulations.<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>Lack of real-time vision<\/h3>\n<p>The Excel spreadsheet only takes changes into account when the HSE manager adds a regulation to the spreadsheet. Nor does it provide a real-time view of either work progress (number of requirements assessed) or site compliance, unless the HSE manager updates it every day, which is extremely time-consuming.<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>Working together<\/h3>\n<p>A simple Excel spreadsheet doesn&#8217;t enable effective collaboration between different employees or departments. The risk of multiplying versions is high, as is the risk of losing data or versions. While online collaboration can be a solution, there is sometimes the risk of error that remains with such a large file.<br \/>\nWhat&#8217;s more, this tool and the extreme customization of the spreadsheet don&#8217;t make it easy to manage employee absences, particularly for vacations, or to pass on to new employees.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What are the alternatives to Excel today?<\/h2>\n<p>At a time when digitalization is taking hold in companies, there are many regulatory monitoring and compliance tools on the market.<\/p>\n<p>A good regulatory monitoring and compliance tool will save you a considerable amount of time compared with Excel-based monitoring, thanks in particular to the automation of certain processes and regularly updated databases.<\/p>\n<h2>The last word&#8230;<\/h2>\n<p>Moving from Excel to a digitized solution is a major step forward in streamlining the work of the HSE manager. It&#8217;s a definite investment for the company, but one that will pay for itself in just a few months, thanks in particular to :<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>saving time for the HSE manager,<\/li>\n<li>exhaustive lists of applicable texts<\/li>\n<li>productivity gains due to process automation: compliance assessment, action plan management, relevant and targeted extractions<\/li>\n<li>overview and real-time consolidation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the essential tasks of the HSE function is to keep a constant watch on changes in regulations relating to the company&#8217;s activities. Many HSE managers still use Excel to manage this aspect of their work. However, with the advent of new technologies and dedicated software, it&#8217;s logical to ask whether the use of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[138,121],"tags":[180],"class_list":["post-7810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-monitoring-and-regulatory-compliance","category-news","tag-tous-pays"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7815,"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810\/revisions\/7815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groupe-novallia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}