2007 Microsoft office system solutions

Meridio and Workshare Solutions Aid Compliance Through Integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Regulatory compliance is not an option for businesses. Virtually every organization,regardless of industry or geography, must comply with government and industrymandates—European privacy directives, stateand federal privacy laws in the U.S., and legislation such as the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Actof 2002, the Health Insurance Unfortunately, compliance can be complex and costly for businesses, and industry standards and corporate quality initiatives often require verifiable compliance with the provisions of legislation. Microsoft and its partners not only help organizations fully comply with mandated regulations and standards, they make compliance an intuitive, efficient part of everyday processes and operations by building compliance solutions into the productivity tools people work with every day. Organizations can use familiar Microsoft® Office technology to transform their business practices into a culture of accountability. Within a company’s governance plan and objectives framework, existing technology investments can make a substantial contribution toward realizing compliance and enhancing the excellence of all business activities.Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999—all carry serious financial penalties for noncompliance.

Workflow and Process Controls Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, together with other tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, provides a unified infrastructure to build documented workflows that structure and track a company’s completion of compliance efforts and exert consistent control over compliance-related documents and reports. As part of a Microsoft-enabled compliance environment, workflows help ensure that the right action is taken at the appropriate time and that all process steps are documented. Workflow tools also can automatically initiate responses to reportable events.

The Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities and policy controls in the 2007 Microsoft Office system help organizations safeguard digital information from unauthorized use. Through integration with Windows Rights Management Services, IRM enables information workers to define exactly how recipients can use the information contained in Office documents. Organizations can create custom usage policy templates that can be applied directly to information such as financial reports, product specifications, customer data, and e-mail messages. Organizations can create policy statements for specific e-mail message types, and embed these statements in the message. Policy statements can instruct the reader how to handle the e-mail message content or serve as a flag to trigger Microsoft Exchange Server to process the message using customdefined rules.

Document Management and ArchivalCompany intranet and extranet sites built on Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be the repository for compliance documents, available to a company’s financial managers, auditors, and others in a highly secure manner for efficient, collaborative review and decision-making. Employees can report and analyze compliance and financial information by using Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, create compliance documents in Microsoft Office Word 2007, manage related communicationswith Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, and send e-mail messages in Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007. The Microsoft partner community has played a significant role in helping businesses to address their unique challenges in realizing compliance. Partners have enhanced corporate compliance efforts by supporting documentation and information management, process automation and workflow, monitoring and reporting, and communication and collaboration. Partners incorporating the 2007 Microsoft Office system in their complian e solutions and  services include:

» Meridio, whose solutions facilitate enterprise document and records management.

» Workshare, which helps businesses maintain security and control of compliance processes and content.