Vendor Sponsorship Solution

A solution for companies who want to control reseller's high-risk practices.

• sponsorship of medical conferences
• research grants
• free product "promotions"
• doctor travel to conferences
• doctor compensation or speaking fees for speaking at conferences
• risks of "improper influence" to doctors who are employees of state-owned entities.

Solution Elements
Technology - ComplianceDesktop® Technology Platform

• Questionnaire Tool™ 
  • Partner Questionnaire Approval/Review process
  • Partner Questionnaire Risk Scoring
• Partner Manager
  • Track all interactions with a partner
• Gifts Travel & Entertainment Tool

Due Diligence

• High, Medium, Low and Enhanced level due dilience cases
• IntegraWatch® | Self-Service Watchlist  

Solution Process

The usual process to implement this solution is for our team to meet with the client’s compliance and legal team to discuss the nature and specific types of sponsorship issues that are faced by the client. In our experience, we have discovered that there are region-specific issues and tactics that are used to divert funds in order to pay for questionable sponsorships. Based on these regional particulars and the client’s specific concerns, an expenditure pre-approval questionnaire is crafted. This questionnaire is then uploaded to the Gifts Travel & Entertainment Tool within the ComplianceDesktop® Partner Manager.

Once the questionnaire is in place it must be completed by every person within the firm wishing to make an expenditure relating to sponsorship. All expenditures are evaluated by the tool to verify whether they fall within corporate policy. Corporate policy will define parameters such as dollar value per trip, number of trips per year, and acceptable expenditures for entertainment, dining and gifts etc. If all sponsorship parameters fall within the corporate policy then the tool will approve the expenditure, issue an approval notice and store the expenditure details for later reference and for the compilation of metrics around hospitality spend by region, team, individual recipient etc.

As a baseline to reveal and reject companies with a history of issues around making such questionable payments in the past, we suggest a full due diligence process on each partner before commencing a reseller relationship with them. Please see the Business Partner Selection and Management Solution for a full explanation of due diligence processes and recommendations around screening prospective partners for illegitimate practices and integrity risks.