Speaker:   Ms. Rukmani Chockalingam
Designation: Reporting and Compliance Manager
Organization:  Airtel Malawi
Profile:   Ms. Rukmani Chockalingam has over 5 years of Industry experience in IT Risk Advisory, Telecom Supply Chain Process, Reporting, and Compliance. She is currently working as a Reporting and Compliance Manager at Airtel Malawi. She is keen on analyzing processes and systems to identify the scope for process improvements and implementing transformations.
Date:  15th April 2021
Title:   Governance and Compliance
Details:    Ms. Rukmani Chockalingam started the session on an interactive note with an explanation of governance, whose responsibility it is, and its important pillars. It was explained that transparency and accountability are the two main important pillars of governance, and the main responsibility of governance lies on the board of directors of the company. Students got to know that governance is there to assure stakeholders and the external board of directors of the company.
She discussed that compliance involves adhering to rules, policies, standards, and laws set forth by industries and/or government agencies. Insights were given on the importance of two types of compliances: regulatory compliance and internal compliance. She explained the importance of training for employees and vendors once compliance is defined. The speaker shared her experience of minimum service level compliance to substantiate the importance of compliance. On being asked about the grey areas in governance, she explained with the following lines, ‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link’. Further, she explained that at the time of two conflicting policy, corporate behavior and culture holds importance during the implementation of the process. Insights on developing skills and getting certifications were shared.
She explained the procure-to-pay (P2P) process. The importance of vendor selection/evaluation, purchase requisition, purchase order, invoice processing, and payments were described. P2P ERP process compliance was discussed. She gave an idea about ERP, Oracle and SAP are two of the best options. The lecture concluded with another round of question-answer sessions where insights on a prescriptive measure to cope up with a change in governance and compliance over time were given.