Every business will face potential prosecution for not being compliant with the law. Non-compliant companies face risks including penalties imposed on the business and executives, jail time, negative publicity, operational suspension, decreased productivity and increased liabilities. Legally compliant businesses may however find themselves in a healthier financial state by avoiding losses incurred through non-compliance.

It is vital for companies to prioritise legal compliance if they want to stay out of trouble with the law, according to Greg Brown, Director of LexisNexis Governance Risk and Compliance division. “Companies need an overview of their position in terms of legal compliance to any Act, standard or best practices,” he says. “To keep ahead, businesses need insight into all relevant legislation pertaining to their operation but more importantly, they need to know when legislation changes rather than referring to outdated legislature.”

However, keeping track of all South African acts and all by-laws can make it almost impossible to ensure compliance when they are changed or revised at a rapid pace. Unless you can afford to have dedicated staff to personally do the groundwork of on-going monitoring, the greater alternative would be to invest in tracking software.

“We have the perfect solution to help businesses stay informed, making compliance easy. LegalEasy 2.0 quite literally does just that by placing a strong focus on tracking legislative developments as and when they happen, helping users keep up to date with legal compliance information,” says Brown.

Notices of change
A key feature of LegalEasy is the legislation update tool that allows an update to reach and notify users as soon there are relevant changes via prompt emails. Furthermore, as soon as information is changed in LegalEasy, the legal registers are updated. This means that you will always have the most up to date view, without having to wait until the end of the month for reports. “Different parts of the business have different focus areas. For that reason we have made the dashboard customisable,” adds Brown.

International and African Leg integration
The global network of trade has become a part of business norm, allowing companies to trade internationally as easily as it is to trade within local borders. For businesses with international relations, LegalEasy gives you the ability to add other documents such as ISO standards, as well as other African and international legislation as required.

Other key features
LegalEasy2.0 accesses legislation to highlight the risks that would affect your business and how they may affect you. The online system also features a flagging facility which allows controls to be linked to sections in acts or regulations and flagged to each other through correlation. “The solution is further complemented by MyLexisNexis, a portal to South African jurisprudence documents, legal cases, annotations, commentary and key analysis of court procedures,” says Brown.