If you are engaging commercially with business partners (customers, 3rd parties, contractors…) then you might need to screen them to prevent trading with persons or organizations that are listed on a sanctioned party list. And that’s when things become difficult.
Denied Persons List, Nonproliferation Sanctions, Consolidated List, List of Statutorily Debarred Parties, Military End User List, OFAC Non-SDN Sanctions, Specially Designated Nationals List, Unverified List, Consolidated United Nations Security Council Sanctions List of Individuals and Entities, Consolidated List of Persons, Groups and Entities Subject to EU Financial Sanctions, Complementary List of EU Sanctions, Consolidated Canadian Autonomous Sanctions List, Economic Sanctions and Target List, Consolidated List of Financial Sanctions Targets… and those are just a few examples!
You might also need to add country specific lists. Even European countries since most have additional lists complementing EU’s own ones.
Failure to comply can lead to administrative penalties and civil or criminal prosecution, potentially resulting in fines, revocation of license to operate, issuance of a cease-and-desist order or even jail time. And even if no penalties are enforced, lost business trust, and impacted reputation are not to be discounted.
One might consider that it is possible to manually screen all new customers during the onboarding phase, but what about screening all inbound and outbound delivery documents, purchase scheduling agreements, purchase contracts, purchase orders, purchase requisitions, sales scheduling agreements, sales contracts, sales orders, sales quotations, etc.?
And this is especially true if you are a small or medium size business which might not be able to employ a full-time in-house sanctions specialist dedicated to these due diligence checks and constantly monitoring for new sanctions.
As recognized by the International Chamber of Commerce, “many SMEs are overwhelmed by the extensive international anti-corruption legislation and the complex ethics and compliance procedures” so they need a simple, cost effective due diligence approach.
Enter SAP Watch List Screening
And here’s where I’d like to introduce you to my hidden gem today: SAP Watch List Screening. Contrarily to previous Hidden Gems blogs, this time, it’s not about a specific capability of a well-known solution, but rather about the app itself since it focuses on precisely addressing this requirement.
SAP Watch List Screening enables enterprises across all industries to screen their business partners (names and addresses) against sanctioned party lists, therefore ensuring their compliance with guidelines, regulations, and legislation such as the ones mentioned earlier.
Key capabilities
In short, below are the key features and functionalities offered by this fully Cloud service:
| Business partner screening | Integration and extensibility |
Uploaded and continuously updated sanctioned-party list Real-time compliance checks for order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes Automated screening of restricted or denied parties with inline process blocking and release Ad-hoc screening for extended use cases Resolve screening hits found by either confirming or rejecting via the provided user interface Intelligent screening to avoid repetitive decisions on same address-entity match | Deployed in the Cloud and is available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), accessible from any Web browser Call the screening service on SAP Cloud Platform within the trade compliance document in SAP S/4HANA Call the screening service from any other SAP or Non-SAP application through published APIs Note: this means that SAP Watch List Screening can either be used in the context of SAP S/4HANA (when SAP S/4HANA and/or SAP S/4HANA Cloud are in place), stand-alone, or customers can even call the service from their own SAP and non-SAP systems. |
With SAP Watch List Screening, business users can focus on evaluating potential risks on an exception basis, allowing the majority of transactions to flow through uninterrupted. So why not try it?
If you are interested in learning more, then have a look at the video below and visit the solution webpage:
What about you, how does your company do its business partner screening today? I look forward to reading your thoughts and comments either on this blog or on Twitter @TFrenehard
And if you are interested in learning more about SAP solutions for Governance, Risk, and Compliance, feel free to fill-in the demo request form!
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