Sarbanes-Oxley Act – Meeting Compliance Requirements

Meet Regulatory Guidelines Through the Effective Use of Business Intelligence and Financial Reporting Software Interested in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance? Information Builders can help. The requirement to comply with government mandated regulations is becoming more prevalent in today's business world. Some compliance mandates affect particular industries guidelines, such as the HIPAA and Health Level 7 in healthcare. Others, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, impact public companies in virtually all industries.

Created in response to high-profile accounting and management scandals at widely held public corporations, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has two fundamental goals: to establish corporate and accounting credibility and to restore the trust of investors in public markets. The reforms themselves are designed to reduce fraud and oversights in corporate reporting, accounting, and auditing practices.

With the formation of a new government organization – the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a group with accounting expertise and the power to prosecute violators – Sarbanes-Oxley brings a new level of scrutiny to the books of publicly held companies. Now, more than ever, it is important for a company to have confidence in its financial reporting and forecasting.

Facing tightened quarterly and annual reporting deadlines, corporations must gather disparate information from sources located throughout the enterprise, then quickly process, format, and distribute it. Corporate executives are now being held personally responsible for the accuracy and consistency of information located anywhere in their organizations. Given just 48 hours to report material changes in financial status that could affect the stock market, these senior officers need to be able to quickly summarize financial information and drill down to the underlying details. They must establish and certify internal financial controls and be able to open up their audit trails to government auditors.

The WebFOCUS enterprise business intelligence suite includes robust financial reporting software that can not only generate detailed and accurate financial reports, but also provide a complete audit trail – you can view the underlying code that was used to generate those reports. This audit readiness is vital in case of investigation or examination by a third party.

You can find out more about how to achieve Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance, in our expert series white paper: Achieving Compliance – Meeting Today's Reporting Requirements with Business Intelligence Technology. You can also view a quick demo on how to generate complex financial reports with WebFOCUS.

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