Considering the situation of companies six years after the application of the Sapin 2 law and its article 17, how can we make life easier for companies that are obliged today to implement a third-party assessment measure from an integrity angle, and tomorrow to meet social, societal, environmental and governance imperatives? Interview with Pascal Goupilleau, Business Line Compliance Director at Ellisphere, and Michel Afonso, Business Line Compliance Market Manager at Ellisphere.

When it comes to evaluating third parties, how does Ellisphere respond to market expectations?

Michel

Today, it's true that many tools exist on the market to assess the integrity of a company's third parties. To facilitate analysis, these digital tools provide information, thanks in part to open data.

For ethical reasons, the best tools are based on the recommendations of the AFA (French Anti-Corruption Agency), which have the merit of describing the concrete expectations with regard to regulations.

All of these tools offer KPIs and dashboards to monitor the tasks carried out on the portfolio entrusted to them, by organization and by team. But few of them actually address the major difficulty encountered by companies, which is operational deployment within teams.

How does Ellisphere meet this need for effective operationalization of third-party integrity assessment?

Pascal

With a mission to promote a reliable economy and sustainable growth, Ellisphere has built its Compliance offering in response to this major challenge, at the initial request of major institutional accounts.

The problem faced by these major companies was very clear: how to operationalize third-party assessment throughout their internal organization?

Some had put off equipping themselves with such a solution. Others had tested unsatisfactory solutions.

Several years of development and co-construction exchanges with customers have enabled the Ellisphere team to expand the service offering of the Compliance For Business digital platform.

**In concrete terms, how does the Compliance for Business by Ellisphere platform simplify life for its users?**

Michel

Firstly, by performing an initial probity analysis in less than 3 minutes. And this for nearly 230 million companies worldwide.

The power of the solution lies in the upstream parameterization and the quality of our data.

We are also investing time in the onboarding of the solution, with a project manager who will support our customer in parameterizing the score, with over 150 indicators available, and setting up the decision-making model in line with our customer's risk mapping and internal organization. All the work carried out upstream with the compliance experts will simplify life for operational staff downstream.

Pascal

In addition, the third party's KYB (Know Your Business) score is calculated directly, highlighting all the risk factors and their impact on the overall score.

Each user can call on a colleague in the Compliance department or ask for a recommendation from his or her line manager to finalize the assessment, who will be able to do so even if he or she is not a user of our solution.

Each user is kept informed of current tasks and recommendations.

You don't have to be a Compliance Officer to use Compliance For Business!

But what else?

Pascal

The Compliance For Business platform automates due diligence actions in compliance with regulations, while keeping third parties under surveillance, thus avoiding overloading teams.

Furthermore, there is no point in systematically analyzing every third party in detail. As recommended by the AFA, due diligence must first be adapted to the risk represented by the third party, based on risk mapping. To optimize costs, we recommend investing in in-depth information on the third party, according to its level of risk.

Then, as soon as an event occurs that could influence a review of the third party's probity assessment, the platform user is informed, so that he or she can decide what action to take.

Last but not least, Compliance For Business can be loaded with a very large volume of third parties, enabling them to be placed under surveillance, and periodic reviews to be carried out in line with the risk map drawn up by the company.

To conclude

Michel

Ellisphere's Compliance For Business platform reconciles company-led risk management with the effective implementation of third-party assessment, which is undoubtedly the most cross-functional and resource-intensive procedure within companies.

Pascal

With its Compliance For Business platform, Ellisphere aims to provide economic players with all its expertise in financial and extra-financial data, with the aim of making life easier for companies needing to comply with regulations.