26 GLOBAL REGULATIONS


uncertain foundation for compliance efforts. Lack of consensus across different authorities fuels the confusion; what is permissible in one market or country can easily be prohibited elsewhere. This contributes to additional SKU lines and mix-up, introducing new product formulas to examine for compliance, each intended for different markets with different regulatory requirements. Managing this complex web of


brands and stakeholders, all owned by different people, falls upwards to the individuals who understand how departments and teams fit into the bigger picture. This responsibility flows to the parent-brand, who must and will be accountable for regulatory compliance. The systems leveraged and enforced by the company will determine how much chaos is introduced as a result of new regulations.


Racing against an unforgiving clock Regulatory deadlines are non-negotiable; if you are still producing lines with prohibited ingredients for these markets, you are not only risking consumer and brand safety, but you are also about to lose money due to recalls. Avoiding serious loss means executing a


swift and decisive response. Once regulatory affairs inform an organisation of a necessary compliance action, it is all-hands-on-deck. Company focus now shifts to addressing crucial business questions and developing a strategy to mitigate any negative impact. What is your plan with the existing


inventory? Do you have visibility into how often you are producing new stock? Will you be stuck with the old formulation while you are planning for the future? If you have slow turn, what is your plan for unsold product? You cannot produce more with the old formulation for this market, but you have to avoid an 'out of stock' issue with customers. It is time to reformulate. Everyone is


involved with this kind of change. Regulatory, R&D, marketing, packaging design and sales. You have some time to replenish product lines with the updated formula, but not much. R&D is going to need to prioritise this lift,


but first they are going to need to know which products to dive into. They are going to want to work on the best-selling, highest-turn product lines first. How are you going to track this information down for them? And once the big, obvious products are updated, how are you going to ensure that nothing has been missed, especially those easy-to-overlook SKUs? Your procurement team and suppliers


are not going to have the background on the important products; you will also need to bring them up to speed. Changing your product in adherence


to global regulations affects everyone downstream. Sales teams need to update ordering systems so that the correct SKU is delivered to customers. Furthermore, someone is going to have to figure out which markets you are about to launch new products into. Formulas and safety information will need to be


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registered with authorities, and new packaging and labels will have to be created to reflect the changes. It can take months to resolve all the issues that arise during a reformulation, and without the right systems in place, it can quickly fall apart due to inefficiencies created by fragmentation.


What has been done in the past The complicated structure of brand, product, fragrance and then type encourages a fractured response to regulatory changes. In lieu of a centralised system, homegrown solutions - sometimes the faithful mix of spreadsheets and spiral bound notepads - are utilised for documenting product status, guiding the reformulation effort. Yet with no unified process codified,


important product knowledge can easily be lost to employee turnover, company reorganisations and poor version control. You thought you were looking at the latest formula, one without the prohibited ingredient, but what you were really skimming through was a different product line entirely.


And those changes you did make? They were


only for a sellable SKU, not the product samples and testers that will also need reformulation and repackaging. These recordkeeping systems degenerate as


new owners take over. More so, stakeholders from different brands, teams, products and type have no visibility into your homegrown solution, as the disparate approaches and locally managed copies introduce additional silos. In some instances, digital tools have been


acquired to help encourage collaboration and visibility, but frequently, these systems fail to fully integrate, meaning stakeholders with different responsibilities using different tools find themselves trapped in familiar silos. The same structures that help focus parts


of an enterprise on specific goals introduce fragments and silos. Agility, the ability to pivot and respond quickly in the face of major changes, becomes increasingly difficult when efforts are split across so many factions.


Managing chaos with a single source of truth Hidden behind the various silos and partitions is critical product data that inform an organisation’s decisions. When these insights and bits of knowledge are


trapped in their respective groups, tucked away in spreadsheets and notepads, the value of the data is restricted. Consider a spreadsheet saved on a local


network, say it is an ingredient list for a 0.17 fl.oz. / 5ml sample of lotion that needs to be updated for compliance. Without the appropriate digital resources, the only way to grant access to this information across company partitions is to make a copy and


forward it along to the appropriate stakeholders. Yet there is a risk here. What happens when the original gets updated? Do stakeholders email out a new version and everyone else deletes the old file? How does the organisation verify that all parties are using the same, current information? It is called data fragmentation, which


increases the risks and challenges associated with synchronising multiple versions of the same data. Fragmentation only adds to the confusion around making important business decisions, like updating a formula due to a change in global regulation. Yet there is an inverse that is also true. When


an organisation collates information, creating single source of truth, stakeholders can leverage data to do more, including moving quickly and with certainty in response to market forces. A single source of truth is a system where


data is not duplicated or siloed but referenced. And for an organisation with lots of stakeholders and products, a single source of truth might be the best method for introducing efficiencies into operations. Instead of copying product data, which


creates variants and fragmentation, sources are aggregated, linked, and stored in a single location. This guarantees that everyone is looking at the same information and data. Access rules keep proprietary information safe, but stakeholders can find and illuminate important pieces that would normally be locked away behind silos. A single source of truth is enabled by a central


data warehouse or repository, like the cloud, which avoids partitions, eliminates redundancies, and maintains a current version for stakeholders. The system also preserves version history, giving a clear record of the past so that changes can be tracked over time. It is this kind of technology that enables


companies ensure compliance when reformulating and relabeling product lines.


A platform for centralising product data As new digital solutions are brought in to transform the enterprise, stakeholders find themselves encountering familiar complications, including point solutions and offerings that solve one stakeholder issue but fail to fully integrate with other company resources. With no way to monitor or communicate


along the linear progression of a product, companies discover efforts are stifled by digital manifestations of the silos they were looking


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