Navigating business license compliance requires hours of work and ongoing focus. An enterprise must be on constant alert for all internal and external triggers that necessitate a review of licensing needs. Any compliance update will likely drive the need to update licenses at a minimum.

Business License Compliance Belongs in a Comprehensive Strategy

Determining what’s best for your company requires a review of your current compliance strategy, as well as a strategic assessment of your business direction and corresponding business license implications.

The questions below will help you assess triggers for new business license actions. This will give you a starting point to design an approach that works for your business.

Organization

• How is the current business license compliance function conducted, and how effective is it at meeting business needs?
• Is responsibility centralized at corporate headquarters, distributed at each location, or a blend of both?
• What is the level of transparency, data sharing and overall expertise in the current model?
• What are the strategic and corporate initiatives within your business compliance department?
• Is there a need to consider re-balancing resources to new initiatives versus on-going compliance activities?

Business Initiatives

• How does your company's growth strategy impact business license compliance?
• Are you growing organically and/or by acquisition?
• Are you opening new locations and/or performing new business activities in existing locations?
• Do you anticipate short- or long-term increases in business license compliance activity?

Risk

• What risk(s) does your business face for different types of business license non-compliance?
• Are compliance resources appropriately aligned to the level of risk?
• Are all types of unique business licenses factored into the current approach to compliance?

Cost

• What are the costs of the current approach, both in direct employee cost, and indirect and opportunity costs?
• Does this align with the overall risks, budget and strategic compliance needs of the business?

Understand Your Business License Management Options

Business license compliance is not as straightforward as typical Secretary of State compliance. There are vastly more licensing authorities, information is hard to find, and regulations change constantly. With increasingly harsh penalties for non-compliance, it’s crucial to have clear procedures in place for tracking and managing business license compliance.

With this in mind, you can assess which of the available options for managing business license compliance will be most effective for your enterprise.

• Self-managed: This approach works best when supported by business license software that offers productivity options such as calendars and alerts. Software fosters greater workflow efficiency and accuracy than static spreadsheets. 
   
• Leveraging a compliance partner: Outside experts bring a rich and up-to-date compliance knowledge base to support the needs and requirements of your business. You can leverage the experience of specialists to oversee the full life cycle of your business license portfolio while retaining full control and transparency.
   
• Blended model: The right strategy can also be a mix of self-managed and leveraging a partner. A blended solution allows you to combine on-going in-house management with outsourcing specific licensing tasks and/or processes to outside experts.

NEXT STEPS

After you complete your strategic review, you may find that selective changes to just a few current processes can drive significant improvements. Other companies find more efficiency and cost-savings in leveraging a partner for some or all of their business license compliance processes.

There are a wide range of options available to optimize your business license compliance strategy. Remember that with the unique complexity of business licenses, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The key is to find resources—whether a partner, software or both—that offer comprehensive capabilities and that actively keep you on top of current and future licensing legislation and regulations. With this, you’ll be able to design a solution that supports your strategic business needs.

Learn more

To learn more about how CT can help you manage your business license needs, contact a CT Service Representative or call (844) 400-9804.