Friday, November 27, 2009

Using the infrastructure of business intelligence to ensure conformity Sarbanes-Oxley act

The Law of the USA Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) of 2002 was established to protect from the investors against the potential for fraudulent accountancy. After the exposure of several scandals of corporation, such as the businesses of Enron and Worldcom, the government of the USA was obliged to pass the legislation ensuring of the precise financial informations and auditant them of the publicly traded organizations in the United States. The SOX affects any public limit company by actions controlled by the State competing with in the US market. Because of the SOX, have not only the financial orders and the programs of report become more strict, but the responsibility to bring back financial results exactly was entrusted to the heads of organization, namely the senior officers (Presidents) and Finance managers (CFOs), to provide financial data and auditantes precise.

This means that the financial departments had to revalue the manner that they control their orders and report. It is more possible only the organizations change data without explaining these changes with the shareholders. Now that the responsibility for the precise financial informations was placed on higher management, with the fine doors and the potential custodial sentences being imposed insubordination, the tools for financial analysis, like those provided by suppliers of business intelligence (BI), become increasingly important for financial process auditant. Ensuring of the orders of adapted data, suitable report and auditant structures, and the precise capture of the following data, are important aspects of conformity of SOX and compose the essential components of the BI solutions.

There are three sections of SOX which directly treat the use of the information technology (IT). Section 302 requires the certification of management that procedures were installation to address financial conditions and precise orders of revelation for all the statements of the financial account. Section 404 requires the certification of management that internal orders and the effective procedures were developed for the financial preparation of report/ratio. In conclusion, section 409 requires that convenient reports/ratios be provided to the investors, to the Securities and Exchange Commission of the USA (dryness), and to other agents of corporation.

Traditionally, the BI software aimed at the needs for the financial decision makers. BI machines organizations at the beginning allowed to analyze financial data, to identify tendencies, and to drill downwards on data of report/ratio to indicate operational transactions, like assigning tasks with various employees, in order to give to management the capacity to put pursuant to the robust processes auditants. The driver behind these functions is the capacity to capture data of several points of emission of data through an organization, and to centralize them in a warehouse of data. Except the centralization of data through the organization, the warehouses of data make it possible at organizations to apply and to monitor activities of quality of data to ensure of the precise data. This reduces the potential for accidental data errors.

The BI tools help of the suppliers to satisfy the requests of the organizations which must be in conformity with the payments of SOX, the charts of score, and the monitoring of economic activity (bam). General report and organizations of laisux of functionality of analysis to adopt a from top to bottom approach to management, to however meet always the conformity of SOX. The Presidents and CFOs who are responsible to ensure conformity and who are responsible towards dryness aren often 't directly responsible for the real production of states or detailed budgeting. The assignment of tasks and the management of the processes are the internal sweeping forces in BI, and the companies of assistance control tasks and responsibilities for the employees of each financial report/ratio and function, as well as to ensure the quality of data. Basically, BI makes it possible to the President to arrive of the processes and the internal data to meet the conformity of SOX, and gives to Presidents the capacity of micromanage of the tasks on each level to ensure conformity, and to identify all the potential errors (as well as to identify which did them, and when they were made in the process). So suitable processes of quality of data are applied, the organizations can guarantee that the data errors do not occur in the warehouse of data itself and that all the principal errors of race and similar are cleaned while they enter the warehouse of data, before financial analyses and functions of report are carried out to answer requirements of SOX.

Although, as mentioned above, the BI software can help the organizations meet the conformity of SOX, suppliers also took into account exits of SOX by improving their continuations of product to make sure that standards required can be answered on a continuous basis. Though many of other forms of software of financial informations meet the conformity of SOX, the BI solutions have the additional allowance of the integrated devices of process of course of operation and integration of data to ensure long-term conformity. Data in assessments can be changed, and structures are not always installation to control these changes. However, the continuations of BI software have the integrated assignment of tasks and auditent functions for management, the distribution, and the data auditantes (based on from where the data come, which have the property of the data, and how the data was treated).

The BI suppliers have already the infrastructure to treat exits of quality of data, and to supervise these exits with time. Many also took into account conditions of standardization of increasing their functionality by adding the modules or the real devices designed to fulfill the continuous requirements of report of the SOX. For example, suppliers such as SAS, Applix, and Business Objects integrate the functionality of conformity of SOX in their BI continuations.

SAS ensures conformity the SOX by providing the possibilities to evaluate and validate statements of the financial account with the sophisticated report and the analytics, and to create a process of audit with a deposit rechercheable for the documents, the processes and the orders financial. The financial processes are well controls, and of the cycles of report are considerably reduced (compared with the able organizations to only run of the reports/ratios of month-end), because of the structures already in place to clean, consolidate, and evaluate data. Moreover, the financial intelligence of SAS makes it possible users to consolidate data of the disparate sources more quickly and exactly; the way, analyze and give an account of the risks and the physical changes; and supervise the effectiveness of the initiatives of conformity and government.

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