Companies that spread the responsibility for reviewing their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance are finding lower costs and higher profits.

The findings are from a report by Aberdeen Group, which conversely found limitng the SOX review to a small group of managers correlated to an impaired performance.

Aberdeen found companies that used a combination of including business process analysts, project management and changing IT beyond requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley significantly improved operating results, whilst at the same time introducing business improvements.

Jim Hurley Aberdeen's vice president of risk, security and compliance, commented "Firms where the CEO, CFO, and the board are directly involved in the day-to-day tasks of SOX compliance are operating as laggards." Mr Hurley, author of the report added. "By contrast, performance leaders have already pushed responsibility for SOX compliance down in the organization."

If your company does not take this opportunity to leverage SOX to improve inefficient business procedures, continued Hurley, "it is going to face stiff competition in the future that are operating at full throttle and with complete balance."

The full Automating SOX Compliance Benchmark Report can be read on the Aberdeen site.

Related Articles
CFOs Call For Leeway on SOX
Novell IT Asset Management Move
Internal Controls and IT
Internal Controls and Business Processes
Internal Controls and Monitoring
Internal Controls For 404