Noteworthy
Governance Interest Groups Join Forces
In a move that promises to expand the resources available to CFOs struggling to put governance principles into practice, the Compliance Consortium has merged with and become part of the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG). The organizations share similar aims: The consortium is a group of software and service providers that promotes effective corporate governance, compliance and risk management, and the OCEG provides a framework for implementing and managing compliance and ethics programs.
"The Compliance Consortium has been focused on the important topic of identifying best practices for applying technology to governance, risk, compliance and ethics management processes," says Scott Mitchell, president and CEO of OCEG. The merger will "further OCEG's broader charter to help organizations align those activities to drive business performance and promote integrity," Mitchell reports.
"There is a lot of good work to be done providing guidelines and instruction on how to best apply technology to improve governance, risk and compliance management," adds Sebastian Holst, president of the Compliance Consortium.
Many CFOs will welcome help in those areas, particularly in applying technology to compliance activities. Tech investments will account for approximately one-third of companies' overall compliance expenditures this year, according to data from AMR Research. Businesses will spend more than $5.2 billion on technologies to support their compliance activities out of a total compliance spend of close to $15.5 billion.
New Round of BPM Buyouts
In July, business intelligence application provider Business Objects announced that it will acquire SRC Software, a privately-held business performance management (BPM) vendor, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $100 million. The companies expect to close the deal before the end of September.
With more than a 17 percent share of the business intelligence software market, Business Objects is the dominant player in that space, according to data from IDC Research. The acquisition positions the company to meet the needs of the increasing number of businesses that want to purchase their BPM system from their business intelligence vendor.
The announcement follows hot on the heels of the Cartesis Group's purchase of Inea Corp., a Toronto-based provider of enterprise planning, forecasting and reporting tools for the financial services sector. Inea has more than 7,000 customers in 44 countries. Cartesis, an established BPM player based in Paris, sees the acquisition as key to its long-term goal of delivering functionality that encompasses what it calls "the three pillars of BPM": financial consolidations, planning and forecasting, and information delivery.
Cartesis is shelling out to boost the analytic capabilities of its product line, too. In July the company announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Advance Info Systems Inc., a provider of online analytical processing (OLAP) software for interactive reporting and analysis.
Group To Battle Data Theft
IBM, together with several dozen other organizations, including American Express, Merrill Lynch and the World Bank, has formed the Data Governance Council to help companies manage access to their critical information, measure operational risk associated with that access, and defend their data against hacker attacks and other security breaches.
"Increasingly, companies are seeing alarming rates of data theft," says Robert Garigue, chief information security officer with the Bank of Montreal, a council member. "We need a better approach to overseeing appropriate access to critical information at all levels to help minimize this threat."
The council's efforts will also help companies mitigate the risks that arise when they exchange data. "One of the biggest problems for organizations is how to manage and control all the data that resides within a company these days, especially as more and more companies do business with each other online, extending into large data supply chains," notes Steven Adler, chair of the council and program director with IBM Data Governance Solutions. "There is a clear need for common solutions and governance models to protect and share data on different levels."
Software
Enterprise Performance Management
When Oracle won its epic 18-month takeover battle to scoop up PeopleSoft last year, CEO Larry Ellison took pains to assure users of PeopleSoft's Enterprise line of applications that his company would provide support for those products until at least 2013. In January, Oracle announced it would assign some 8,000 developers to the task of integrating its offerings with PeopleSoft's and with the enterprise software products Oracle acquired through its 2003 purchase of J.D. Edwards.
The fully integrated product, dubbed "Project Fusion," is scheduled to debut in 2008, but Oracle has wasted no time in releasing a new version of PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) that supports users' eventual migration to that system. The new release, version 8.9, includes Web services technology that enables the product to inter-operate with a wide range of third-party tools. Web services is a keystone of Oracle's convergence strategy.
PeopleSoft EPM 8.9 also offers a range of new planning and budgeting functions, including an enhanced activity-based management component that enables users to perform modeling and what-if analysis without having to run batch processes. The suite's global consolidations component now includes functionality to manage multiple reporting structures for both U.S. GAAP and international accounting standards.
In addition, PeopleSoft EPM 8.9 includes a range of new usability enhancements, such as personal scorecards and individual planning workspaces, to make users more productive.
Oracle, 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065. (800) ORACLE1 (800 672 2531). www.oracle.com
Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Assistance
Some of the biggest challenges businesses face in their drive toward sustainable Sarbanes-Oxley compliance arise from massive organizational changes. Merger-and-acquisition deals and reorganizations can severely impact a company's financial control environment, and the extensive changes needed to keep controls accurate and up-to-date after such transformations can soak up large amounts of time and resources.
Certainty 8.1, the latest release of Movaris' Web-based Sarbanes-Oxley and financial control management tool, tackles that challenge head on with a range of change management functions that simplify high-volume processing of modifications to financial controls. For example, users can perform mass updates for hundreds of controls in different business units, and they can easily change the personnel assigned to large numbers of control tests.
The product can also export large amounts of data generated by control and exception management activities directly into a spreadsheet for analysis or sorting. Users can drill down from the spreadsheet to the supporting control activity data in Certainty.
Movaris, 20450 Stevens Creek Boulevard, Suite 250, Cupertino, CA 95014. (888) 800-7545. www.movaris.com
Reconciliation and Account Balancing
Many treasuries rely on manual processes and spreadsheets to reconcile deposit reports against their monthly bank statements. But that approach can take up to 60 days, during which time companies are exposed to the risk of losses from larceny and fraud. In addition, spreadsheets lack the controls that organizations need to ensure the integrity of their financial reporting processes. Increasingly, forward-looking treasuries are turning to software that automates their reconciliation processes.
Treasurers headed in that direction may want to investigate ReconNet ES, the latest version of Trintech Group's reconciliation and account balancing product. Upgrades to the tool's security features include role-based functionality, which enables administrators to assign specific roles and permissions to users; support for encryption of credit card numbers and other sensitive information; and a single sign-on protocol that enhances administrators' control of ID, password and software access assignments. Plus, a system time-out feature limits the length of time the software is accessible after a user discontinues work in the system.
The product includes detective and preventative controls to improve auditability and regulatory compliance. Users can move data from the production system into an archive system while maintaining a comprehensive audit trail.
ReconNet ES also incorporates new features designed to benefit large multi-national enterprises, including high-volume processing power for exception management and resolution and support for multicountry, multilingual reporting.
Trintech Group Plc, 15851 Dallas Parkway, Suite 855, Addison, TX 75011. (800) 416-0075. www.trintech.com