Not an original line I realize. But I have been a believer in this mantra for some time as a sales leader. Without this cadence it is inevitable that some people just refuse to follow the rules whether through ignorance or conscious abstention. Written procedures, investments in training and trusted personnel getting paid to perform their job are a great start, but how does one know that everything was performed as expected without reliable measurement systems. And if you don’t know exactly, what risks are you taking for yourself and for your organization?

I read recently that the Coca-Cola Company had laptops go missing that exposed personal information for more than 74,000 people because the person responsible for disposing of the equipment didn’t do his job. But how can that be? The policy is to encrypt all the data on laptops. Apparently someone missed a step in the process. When the laptop comes offline and is no longer used, it is erased and disposed of properly. Oops, missed that one too.

My guess is that a broad spectrum of stakeholders at Coca-Cola, including IT, security, legal, financial and environmental people, discussed, documented and approved policies that dictated how this was supposed to work. And yet it failed, and the company is facing potentially millions of dollars in forensic, legal and operational expense because someone didn’t follow the rules. ALM is a strategic program that produces audited data to insure all of the steps in the process are being followed. It is not a convenient, easy or cheap way to get rid of stuff and should never be viewed as such. In the case of Coca-Cola, a list of retired assets by serial number would be provided to MPC and MPC would in return confirm with the organization that those items were received, processed and disposed of in accordance with their policies. A completely closed loop.

It is human nature that people will respect what is inspected. All too often, rules are created, procedures written, training conducted and then placed on autopilot. At MPC we believe that providing standard, closed looped reporting on the handling and disposition of any asset that comes off the network within an organization is the key to insuring written policies are being followed to the letter. Understanding that a single laptop that falls through the cracks creates unimaginable risks for an organization is paramount. Whether these incidents are by accident or through malicious intent, a certified provider like MPC measures and documents the compliance of an organizations processes and people to mitigate unnecessary risk.