Reduce the High Cost of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)

Compliancy specializes in custom Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance automation that can leverage your existing investments and streamline and reduce the cost of SOX management.  

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was one of the most comprehensive financial regulatory laws in U.S. history fashioned to protect investors and stop corporate malfeasance by requiring higher standards of corporate transparency and disclosure with heavy penalties for non-compliance. 

Companies have invested heavily in becoming compliant and are now seeking ways to approach compliance more systematically, reduce costs, and be able to reallocate precious resources to more direct revenue generation projects.  

The following describes some key considerations when selecting your SOX automation solution:

Can you cost effectively leverage and extend your investments

The first and very vital consideration is how to leverage your current investments in processes, controls and compliance programs.  Your solution needs to be able to easily automate existing investments and do it cost effectively and not have to "start over".  In addition, you should be able to easily extend them as needed.  

To build a cost effective and sustainable approach requires standardization of processes and technology tools that can automate and provide the key elements of continuous monitoring and management of control documentation, document utilization, certifications, changes, tests and audits over time. 

Can you customize to best fit your company and industry requirements

Your company is unique and your industry has unique requirements.  You need to be able to customize processes to best meet those needs and do it in an affordable manner.  At Compliancy we specialize in leveraging your current investments and being able to easily and quickly customize your compliance controls and processes.  

How can I phase a rollout to see fast success and control costs

In order to optimize your investment we identify three different levels of an effective program each buildingon the other.

Level 1 – Basic Compliance Automation

Ernst & Young identified the following key attributes of an effective controls program:

• Consistent processes
• Highly automated business processes
• Effective IT general controls
• Tightly defined configurable controls for financially significant processes
• Process owner accountability
• Control self-assessment process
• AS5 (Accounting Standard No. 5) templates for easier and lower cost implementation

AS5 is designed to increase the likelihood of finding material weaknesses in internal controls before they result in problems, eliminate procedures that are unnecessary, and focus the auditor on procedures that can be tailored to the company’s facts and circumstances.  All these are critical to reducing costs while strengthening the financial reporting process thus especially important to smaller businesses.

However, considerable cost efficiencies and improved accountability and management can be further gained by automation of the internal control processes.  The Compliancy ICM software along with its AS5 templates provides a faster, easier and more cost effective solution for taking advantage of compliance automation.

The above list is basic to meeting the fundamental compliance requirements that should be addressable by any good compliance automation solution.  However, while many alternative solutions may provide automation of workflows they do are not able to automate business processes in general and can only work within their confined areas.

Level 2 – Optimized Compliance

To maximize the opportunity to reduce costs there are several other key requirements that need to be considered.  This is where most other solutions start to fail to deliver because they are not business process based. 

The following requires a business process based solution with advanced workflow management to reduce costs even further by more effective real-time management and reducing costs through prevention and early detection:

• Continuous control monitoring
• Issues prevention and early identification through business rules monitoring
• Transaction level monitoring for related applications
• Real-time dashboard monitoring and reporting including alerts
• Automated issues management and remediation
• Roles based interfaces and granular security access

Level 3 – Business Transformation

A compliance designed Business Process Management (BPM) based solution with generalizable application interfaces, tools, and built-in regulatory level controls is needed to transform any risk management and compliance requirements to real business value.  With a compliance designed BPM based application you can accomplish the following:

• Implement built-in regulatory level controls to ensure business results and integration with GRC processes.
• Distribute tasks directly to the responsible individuals to eliminate complex system access, reduce training and support, and accelerate task completion.
• Integrate risk and compliance directly into business processes to eliminate redundancy for more cost effective streamlining and better decision making.
• Automate and manage any risk and compliance process requirement for a future proof investment.

Easier, Faster Business Value That Is Future Proof and More At NO Additional Cost

Compliancy makes it easier to quickly get started and then evolve as needed with roles based interfaces, SOX specific templates, and no programming required.  Compliancy customers have been up and running in as little as a weeks time.  Our research has clearly shown 20-50% increase in savings versus more traditional methodologies and an increase in 20-30% faster response to issues.

More cost effective sustained compliance

• Reduces the cost, time and stress of maintaining SOX compliance.
• Ensures sustained, operationally efficient compliance.
• Greater overall cost reduction and more efficient use of resources for a better ROI.
• Reduces cost of testing and issue management by preventative issue identification.
• Allows companies to return their focus to their core business.

More effective compliance management

• Ensures controls are being properly performed using prescribed methodology
• Maintains SOX/audit readiness for fast and easier turn around
• Provides visibility and confidence in control and SOX compliance for all stake holders through an impartial system of accountability
• Reduces the corporate and personal risks associated with SOX compliance
• Improves SOX processes, documentation and policies
• Reduces compliance risk with better audit-ability, accountability & data accuracy

More effective business and risk management

• Improves risk management with greater visibility across all internal controls allowing faster reaction to issues, adapting to change requirements, and work on prevention.
• Easier and more effective management through consolidation and automation across ALL enterprise internal controls with a single management system.
• More effective business execution through integration with business operations and processes
• More effective execution of business strategy through compliance integration.

Future proofs a company’s investment for change and growth

• More flexible and efficient compliance designed BPM-based solution to maximize cost reductions, provides for growth, manage change and execute an integrated business strategy.
• Enables cross enterprise integration to scale, extend management controls.
• Customizable to extend to other compliance requirements minimizing training costs.
• Ability to go from compliance to business process management to realize even more significant streamlining of business processes, greater cost reductions and more effective business decisions.

For more information contact us at info@compliancy.com or call +1-919-806-4343.

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