Automate your entity management today
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June 3, 2025
Today's organizations are creating new subsidiaries at an increasing rate to manage liability, minimize tax burden and address regulatory and licensing requirements. As the number of subsidiaries grows, companies have to either spend more time and effort managing entities or seek new solutions to more effectively address governance operations and compliance.
While entity management itself isn’t new, many teams still struggle to realize its full potential, held back by legacy processes and outdated tools. These inefficiencies prevent organizations from fully capitalizing on modern entity management’s ability to streamline governance and compliance. Companies that continue to rely on manual, error-prone methods risk overlooking the transformative benefits that a centralized, automated system can provide.
Entity management must ensure that all legal entities belonging to the organization are in good standing and compliant with applicable regulations for statutory filings. However, as part of a broader governance operations strategy, entity management also supports risk mitigation, regulatory adherence and corporate governance across multiple jurisdictions.
Although individual legal entities can have their own statutory obligations depending on their tax structure and jurisdictions, most of these obligations are similar in nature. Typically, these requirements include:
An effective entity management solution should also address the governance needs of organizations by ensuring that subsidiaries abide by the governance requirements of the parent company. The ideal entity management system serves as a single source of truth for company records and policies, providing for governance reporting.
Without an effective entity management system, organizations face significant challenges that undermine their ability to meet compliance goals. Legacy processes and reliance on spreadsheets and manual workflows create inefficiencies and errors that increase the risk of non-compliance. As a result, organizations may face penalties, disruptions or even reputational damage due to missed deadlines or inaccurate corporate records.
When corporate paralegals are managing large numbers of legal entities with outdated tools, ensuring compliance becomes increasingly difficult. Without a centralized, digital repository for corporate records, businesses lack the visibility needed to meet regulatory requirements consistently. Working from disparate systems or paper files complicates reporting and makes it hard to ensure that every entity is compliant with statutory obligations.
As the number of legal entities increases, so does the complexity of compliance. Manual processes that once seemed manageable quickly become a liability, as the risk of errors and omissions grows. Missing a filing date or errors in corporate records are all too easy when corporate paralegals oversee hundreds of legal entities without access to effective automation tools and legal tech — yet these smaller omissions and easy mistakes can cause significant risk.
Instead, organizations that switch from manual processes to governance ops and entity management software can streamline compliance by:
Governance refers to the systems, processes and controls that organizations put in place to ensure effective decision-making, compliance and risk management across all areas of the business. It involves overseeing how policies are applied, ensuring adherence to legal requirements and making strategic decisions that align with the organization’s objectives and values. Good governance is essential for organizations to operate smoothly, mitigate risks and maintain stakeholder trust.
Entity management plays a critical role in governance by providing the foundation for accurate, consistent and accessible data. A well-organized entity management system centralizes key governance documents and corporate records, enabling teams to easily track compliance, monitor governance processes and make informed decisions across jurisdictions. By ensuring that all legal entities are in good standing and compliant with regulatory requirements, entity management supports the broader goals of governance and establishes a clear, transparent structure that aligns with corporate policies.
As organizations scale, managing governance becomes increasingly complex, especially when dealing with multiple subsidiaries, jurisdictions and changing regulations. This is where governance operations (governance ops) comes into play. With the right systems in place and modern entity management software, organizations can streamline governance workflows, reduce manual processes and create a unified platform that supports governance at every level.
As organizations grow, they increasingly expect their entity management systems to do more than just handle governance and compliance. Today’s businesses need better visibility into their operations, more reliable data for decision-making and immediate access to corporate records for a variety of purposes — beyond just compliance tasks.
By shifting to a digital system like a virtual minute book, companies can make corporate records instantly accessible to the entire team. This reduces reliance on lawyers for information retrieval and provides real-time access to critical data for auditors and key stakeholders. Streamlining access to this information accelerates decision-making processes and helps businesses stay agile in fast-moving environments.
In industries where M&A activity is high, improving entity management capabilities can have a direct impact on deal success. With access to accurate and up-to-date data, project teams can reduce the time spent on due diligence, improve organizational readiness and ultimately enhance the value of the transaction. This leads to smoother deals, greater confidence among stakeholders and more favorable outcomes for the organization.
Modern entity management systems also give decision-makers a clear, comprehensive view of the company’s structure. Tools like automated structure charts provide fast, reliable, visual insights into the jurisdiction, tax structure, ownership percentages and historical data of subsidiaries. This clarity empowers shareholders and senior leadership to make better-informed decisions and maintain a unified view of the business — a critical advantage in a landscape that demands greater transparency and coordination.
As organizations scale, the need for effective entity management becomes more critical. Beyond just ensuring compliance, modern entity management systems provide the tools and insights necessary to drive informed decision-making, streamline governance and reduce risk. By centralizing corporate records, automating workflows and improving data accessibility, organizations can empower teams to be more efficient and proactive in managing their legal entities.
Here are some practical takeaways for maximizing the value of entity management:
By adopting entity management best practices and integrating them into a broader governance operations strategy, organizations can streamline operations, minimize compliance risk and enhance decision-making across the business. Governance ops helps align governance processes with the organization's strategic goals, ensuring a unified and efficient approach to managing legal entities and compliance. It’s time to move beyond legacy systems and embrace a solution that can scale with your organization’s needs.
"Very easy to use, modern interface, excellent support. Athennian has an amazing conversion team. They helped us migrate all of our data and the training was very good."
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“When we were reviewing other entity management systems on the market, in some cases, we were not comparing apples to apples. But with Athennian, there was really no comparison. The paralegals were so excited to come on board.”
"There are so many things I like about this program, but the one thing that really stands out is the user friendly interface. The program is fast and allows me to enter corporate information very quickly and efficiently. I would also like to note that Athennian provides the most the fantastic customer service."
