Abstract

3M was a Minnesota, USA based corporation working in four business segments - Safety and Industrial; Transportation and Electronics; Health Care; and Consumer. The Ethics & Compliance team at 3M was an independent function that reported directly to the Audit Committee of the 3M Board of Directors. This was to ensure autonomy in reporting so that the Ethics & Compliance team could act independently when compliance issues rose at 3M. The Ethics and Compliance team created reports to be presented to stakeholders for analysis. With growth in business across globe, so did the data handled by the compliance department. The department had learned well to change with time and adopt new technology as and when required. The data journey of the ethics and compliance department started with activity based reporting and went on to increase its reach by creating dialogues with third party associates of 3M as well as employees of the company from various departments. Over a period of time the reporting in the compliance department evolved from activity based simple reporting to the use of predictive analytics for complex and more precise reporting and data analysis. Use of predictive analytics helped the department to leverage the humungous amount of compliance data in a proactive way, driving insights and improving performances of employees and departments.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Importance of understanding data, its source and usage
• Use of data analytics to make business decisions

Keywords

Ethics; compliance; business intelligence; predictive analytics; 3M; Dash boards; Scorecard; Data Analytics; Compliance issues; Business Insights and Influence;