In some cases a company can, like any customer, decide to stop buying a particular good or service, and so even severance or shutdown costs can be under its control. Of course there are exceptions. Government agencies tell companies that they need to remit payroll taxes for each employee and buy a certain amount of compliance services.

One of the biggest concerns  a 'buyer' (or investor) might have in this example is around the security and protection of users information. They want to know that user data is protected and safe (and their names won't be dragged thorugh the mud due to a hacking intrusion which exposes sensitive user information). Compliance services are designed to help companies ensure they are compliant to various frameworks within this context.

There are lots of headhunting companies out there, in this example you might use (for instance): Faro Recruitment's Policy which is a type of compliance service similar to what you are asking about which I would use in this context. Compliance is really about demonstrating a company follows regulations and best practice according to various standards.  Doing so ensures that any risk is minimalised - giving buyers (and any other company that works with them) confidence.

Imagine if Faro's to set up a new social networking website/service that became a roaring success overnight.  Perhaps we would like to invite Google, Facebook or Microsoft and others to either buy a part of our business, or to invest in our technologies infrastructure to help support the servers and increase our rate of growth and expansion. The investing company will need to carry out 'due diligence' which is basically a short-hand for 'investigating the risk associated with doing business with that company'.  People will often use this word in the context of finance, but it also applies in terms of other risks such as information security.

 

 

In this context, compliance services refer to employing people or a company to assist in ensuring the companies conform to standards, regulations and laws of the industry.These services include maintenance of these standards, communicating updates and changes in relevant laws, standards and regulation, updating of internal policies and communicating this internally. These services would become an involuntary cost to the company if the government enforces this as a non-optional requirement for companies in a particular industry.