You will learn how to set up relevant feeds to monitor regulatory topics and market developments in SGS Digicomply. There are two assignments for setting up regulatory horizon scanning.
For each exercise you will see an Answer link to the article that explains in detail different approaches for finding the answers.
Exercise no. 1: Monitor developments in a specific country (market)
In this exercise you pick one particular country (Singapore) and setup different feeds that monitor relevant areas of interest as a regulatory user.
Assignment: A) Create a general feed for the Market: Singapore
Perform a search for Market 'Singapore'. Once this is done, save the search and name it "Singapore - General". Do not setup any notifications for this particular feed.
Locate the newly created feed in the 'Feeds' tab.
Assignment: B) Create a new search with the same filters above (Market: Singapore) but now add a specific source, the 'WTO documents online (notifications)'.
Enrich this search to include the 'product category: beverages' and other products of interest, e.g. energy drinks, snacks, potato chips and group them together so you will be notified if any of the products of interest appear in a future post.
In this new feed enable a preference to receive Daily notifications at 8:00.
Assignment: C) Take the above saved search and create a new version of it, this time monitoring the main regulatory body in Singapore by adding the 'Agri-food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore' instead of the WTO.
Hint: Go to the saved search in the 'Feed' tab and edit it. Once you have replaced the previous source with the new one, find the 'Save as a new feed' option in the Feed editing tool bar at the bottom.
Assignment: D) Create a folder 'Singapore' in the 'Feed' tab and group the three, newly created feeds within it.
This concludes the exercise. You now have a folder that is looking at a specific market across different dimensions. The General feed and WTO notification feeds will be helpful in scanning news developments as well as proposed changes (Bonus: Did you see the proposed change to delete certain Standards of Identity the government has announced?).
The final feed monitoring the local authority will make sure you are fully aware of announcements being released directly about regulations or product-related alerts.
The Answers to the assignments for Exercise 1 can be found here.
Exercise no. 2: Monitor developments on a specific substance, ingredient of interest.
In this exercise our focus shifts away from an individual market and instead on techniques for monitoring a specific substance (xylitol) at a global level.
Assignment: A) Perform a search for 'xylitol' that includes it as both "smart search", and also as a "Substance". Group them together so both are included in the search. Filter to see post types: 'scientific' and filter further to include an additional keyword 'cancer'.
(this is what the search should look like before adding the post type: scientific and additional keyword)
Assignment: B) Edit the above search to create the same feed but this time specifically focused on source: 'EFSA Publications' (Use the 'Save as New Feed' option as previously mentioned). Select Daily notification preference.
Assignment C) Edit the previous search to create a final feed that looks at 'Regulations' across all markets globally (once again using the 'Save as New Feed'). Make sure to remove the keyword 'cancer' as this is no longer necessary. Create a folder called "Sweetener Watch" and group the three saved searches within it.
This concludes the exercise. You now have a folder that is looking at a specific ingredient a global level covering scientific publications, global regulations and a specific source.