Why Your Business Needs a 21st-Century Due Diligence Defense System

Why Your Business Needs a 21st-Century Due Diligence Defense System

Food Safety is our bread and butter. So, the majority of what we’ve learned about due diligence has been in the context of Food Safety and the Food Safety Act 1990 and its many associated regulations and guidance.

If you have a food business, or you work for one, you probably know that keeping on top of your due diligence obligations can be a bit of an ordeal. With such a (rightly) tightly regulated industry, the steps you need to take to ensure food safety standards are met across all aspects of the supply chain are multiple. Sometimes, it can seem a bit like paperwork for paperwork’s sake, and in the vast majority of cases, you’ll never need to access your records! So it can seem unimportant – until you actually do need to access this information. In this event, it becomes the most critical information you own.

When you’re busy running your business day to day, it’s not impossible to keep track of all your due diligence procedures, but it’s certainly difficult. In all the years we’ve been working with caterers, restaurateurs and food businesses we’ve consistently seen how the travails of due diligence record keeping leave thousands of businesses vulnerable to legal disaster. That’s why we have developed a solution.

Yes, we’re selling something. But, it’s something we know you need.

Whether you’re a food business or not, we know you’ve thought it: “what if I didn’t bother with this paperwork? Nobody’s going to know… And we’ve done the right thing, anyway.”

Your reputation and trustworthiness as a business rest on you not only doing the right thing but being able to PROVE that you’ve done the right thing when the proverbial hits the fan.

A due diligence defence system ensures that you have safeguards in place to ensure that every aspect of your operation – from vetting suppliers to managing full-scale product recalls – is not only as safe as can be but as robustly EVIDENCED as can be.

The defects of manual, desk-based due diligence record keeping

The reason you may have considered due-diligence-related paperwork to be laborious is that it’s time-consuming. There’s also the issue that these systems are prone to error, and unless you also keep concurrent digital data regarding them elsewhere, it’s difficult to extract insights from documents – whether they’re stored digitally or physically. For the same reason, it’s difficult to share data with other stakeholders. And, documents can be sabotaged, destroyed or misplaced.

Make your life easier with an app-based due diligence defense system

The entire reason we’ve developed our app, DUED, is to provide a fast, easy and convenient way to manage your due diligence process from start to finish. The app provides tracking, traceability and analysis of your due diligence process. It can make it easier for you to identify when there are opportunities for improvement in your existing business practices, as well as enable you to more readily demonstrate compliance with regulations and legislation.

Not only does the app help prevent inadvertent non-compliance by providing you with a foolproof framework and alert systems, but it can also be accessed by multiple people at once. We charge for the number of devices, but you have unlimited users. This allows for real-time information sharing and remote access for different stakeholders with opposing working schedules.

The main benefit of switching to an app-based Due Diligence record keeping solution

Getting your time back. The checks and necessary documentation required for your business to ensure legal compliance can be convoluted and overwhelming. Simplifying this process gives you back your valuable time, so you can focus on what you do best – which is presumably not paperwork.

Other uses for the DUED app

What we realised was that while the due diligence process for the food industry is unique, the principles involved in due diligence record keeping are universally applicable. That’s why we’ve worked hard to expand the app to accommodate recording requirements for more disciplines. It’s such a versatile piece of software, with the ability to build custom reporting and specialist categories, that we know it will prove invaluable for companies in multiple industries. In particular, the app has been expanded to include the recording requirements for businesses in respect of fire safety, health & safety and facilities management. But the scope is virtually limitless.

Saving your business precious time and money

DUED saves you time and frustration, prepares you for surprises, enables super-fast audits and allows you to learn and grow as a business through reporting and data analytics. This means you’ll not only benefit from extra-tight compliance standards, but you’ll be able to sleep easy knowing even if the worst happens you can provide evidence in minutes – and that the effort involved will involve tapping a touchscreen.

An often overlooked benefit of taking your due diligence process to the cloud from end-to-end is the environmentally-friendly (and wallet-friendly) benefits of reducing your need for paper/printers/toners and document storage facilities. We’re fast heading towards a paperless society, and there’s no reason why checkboxes cannot be ticked in a form in an app rather than on paper.

We’ve recently launched our specific website for DUED, which gives you further insight into how the app works, with screenshots and examples. We also detail our monthly and annual price plans, so you can see for yourself how affordable the luxury of paperless, intuitive, watertight due diligence recording can be. Go to Dued’s Website to take a look.