Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance: Five Steps to Cleaning Up Your SOX Act

3 minute read

July 2019

While Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance management may be old hat for some, organizations today continue to wrestle with the financial and operational costs of conducting, documenting and reporting on their SOX compliance assessments.

While some SOX compliance initiatives have matured in the 17 years since its inception, many institutions rely on technology that has failed to keep up with the changing regulatory and financial landscape.

History shows that the first wave of on-premise solutions placed the technology burden on enterprises and their IT departments, imposing costly commitments to hardware, software, and the human resources necessary for maintaining them. These old solutions were difficult to scale and challenging to maintain, especially in a global business context of multiple divisions and regions.

Given its storied history, contemporary SOX compliance management has been put on the back burner and software vendors aren’t investing in new products. Managers are comfortable with the status quo – collecting annual maintenance revenues without creating additional functionality necessary to bring compliances into the 21st century. Saddled with legacy systems, risk professionals lack the next-generation automation and reporting they need…and are stuck with mismatched SOX.

Effective and Efficient SOX Compliance Management with Cloud-Based Automation

Fortunately, professionals can ditch their mismatched systems and embrace an alternative that’s available right now: cloud-enabled SOX compliance management solutions. By moving from on-premise to on-demand technology, professionals can immediately position their compliance program for greater advantage by following these five steps.

1. Say Yes to the Cloud

Shifting to SaaS removes the software/hardware life cycle out of operations and budget equations. Upgrades and updates are applied automatically, ensur­ing that each organization always works with the latest software version and most advanced functionality.

2. Raise the Bar with Integration   

Centralizing compliance on the cloud removes barriers to integration. A true shared control library reduces duplication of work and documentation. Through one common dashboard, compliance officers can standardize tests across multiple locations by drawing on an integrated pool of data, reporting is no longer impeded by distance or disparate data locations.

3. Cut Down on the Migration Clutter

On-premise software deployment, from sourcing to installation, can be a many-month long project. However, when moving to a SaaS solution, the average migration time is less than 30 days, including training and data import, allowing for easy and effective SOX compliance management.

4. Banish Busy Work and Administrivia

Using SaaS shifts almost all the infrastructure requirements, and most of the IT burden, from the company to the provider, eliminating all the costs and hassles of IT admin­istration, maintenance, support, resourcing and more. All the necessary expertise for security, storage and disaster recovery is carried by the application vendor.

5. Say Goodbye to Constantly Calling IT

The truth is, compliance system support will never be IT’s top priority. But through the simplicity of a contemporary application’s modern interface and the sophistication of its underlying engine, end-users can filter and/or manipulate data, craft reporting templates and more, without relying on IT for guidance or support.

How ProcessUnity Can Automate SOX Compliance

ProcessUnity’s cloud-based Sarbanes-Oxley compliance management solution provides secure, cost-effective, automated support for critical components in a compliance program. Now, everything from business process documentation, risk evaluation and controls definition, to issues management and controls and assessment testing, is easily accessible for a successful SOX compliance solution.

ProcessUnity streamlines the review and validation of assessment results for both internal teams and external auditors. Contemporary SOX applications like ProcessUnity have incorporated simple configurations allow business users to create, apply and manage their own business rules without calling IT. Goodbye mismatched SOX, hello automated SOX compliance management.

Download the Next-Generation Sarbanes Oxley Compliance white paper and simplify SOX compliance with ProcessUnity’s next-generation automation tools.

Related Articles

About Us

ProcessUnity is a leading provider of cloud-based applications for risk and compliance management. The company’s software as a service (SaaS) platform gives organizations the control to assess, measure, and mitigate risk and to ensure the optimal performance of key business processes. ProcessUnity’s flagship solution, ProcessUnity Vendor Risk Management, protects companies and their brands by reducing risks from third-party vendors and suppliers. ProcessUnity helps customers effectively and efficiently assess and monitor both new and existing vendors – from initial due diligence and onboarding through termination. Headquartered outside of Boston, Massachusetts, ProcessUnity is used by the world’s leading financial service firms and commercial enterprises. For more information, visit www.processunity.com.