Simplifying SOX compliance with eGRC tools

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance isn’t easy work. To maintain the transparency and accountability that regulators demand, you need to keep up with evolving and expanding guidelines, as well as coordinate data from various stakeholder groups.

That takes time, especially if you are using traditional toolsets like spreadsheets to do the heavy lifting for your governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) needs. Modern SOX compliance software transforms your practice, replacing manual tasks with enterprise GRC (eGRC) tools that can dramatically reduce your team’s workload. The right eGRC solution is flexible and scalable to fit your organization’s unique control environment needs, allows you the time to focus on more strategic work and can save you money—both in person hours and potential fines for SOX noncompliance.

Three significant benefits of an eGRC implementation are: centralization of data and controls, automatic updates and removal of tedious and redundant processes.

Let’s briefly explore exactly how eGRC tools can streamline and modernize your company’s approach to SOX compliance.

Everyone can go to one place

One of the most important benefits of using eGRC is that your control environment is captured in a single location. Instead of being housed in multiple places that each use slightly different standards and practices, key ICFR controls and supporting evidence—critical for preventing and detecting errors in your financial reporting process—are in one central location.

Internal and external audit support is also simplified with a single point of entry and serves as a single source of truth. With a SOX-centric eGRC solution, management, control owners, internal audit and external auditors all can access the information they need with established, role-based user access permissions.

At the same time, these stakeholders—whether the chief financial officer or the accounts payable staff—can obtain personalized views of the reporting and data as needed thanks to user-friendly dashboard functionality within the eGRC system.

Updates are handled automatically

A modern SOX-centric eGRC system will also stay updated automatically, allowing increased transparency across all the silos inside your company.

SOX rules and requirements can change quickly and subtly; keeping up with all the nuances is challenging. A good eGRC solution takes on the bulk of that burden, lifting the onus of keeping up with every little change and update to regulatory requirements.

In addition, when changes are made internally to any controls, the eGRC system will update every area that is impacted in the stream.

“You can more efficiently document, maintain and conduct the controls. For example, without a tool, if I have to make a change to one control, I have to update it in a few different places—maybe many places,” notes Maggie Berkeley, a principal in risk consulting at RSM. “With a good GRC tool, you update in one place and that update flows through the entire system. Overall, the user interfaces allow you to save tons of time with every step along the way.”

Companies still using spreadsheets or other traditional approaches can see enormous time savings and reduction in manual errors when they implement an eGRC solution. When it comes to SOX compliance, these gains in speed and precision are immense.

“If you look at a company with several locations globally and a few thousand employees, you might have to deal with 250 controls or more. That’s when eGRC tools become lights-out game-changing,” says Rob Frattasio, National Leader of Process Risk and Controls at RSM.

Manual updates in multiple places always introduce the risk of something being entered wrong somewhere. Modern eGRC tools make sure that when an update is made, that change appears in each associated instance. This both saves time and prevents inadvertent manual errors.

Goodbye, tedium; hello, productivity

SOX-centric eGRC tools won’t actually take all the tedium out of the workday, but they will take it down several notches.

Now that your teams won’t have to repeat so many mundane tasks, they are less likely to make critical errors as they keep your SOX monitoring and reporting up to date, accurate and on track.

In addition, your teams will also have the time, focus and energy to concentrate on other work, delivering a strategic advantage for the team and company.

Time is money, so eGRC is a wise purchase

In the end, modern eGRC tools will let your people focus on what matters most and waste less time accessing and assessing data for reporting—and the same goes for internal and external auditors.

“The first year that a company goes with a comprehensive eGRC tool, stakeholders may not see a lot of benefit and may worry they spent a lot of money for nothing, because they have to work out some kinks and adopt new processes and ways of thinking,” Frattasio says. “Year two and beyond, though, they’re like, ‘Wow, how did we ever do this without this?’”

The less time spent on compliance processes means the sooner and more accurately you can complete reporting and focus on strategic areas within the business. That means less cost of compliance and less risk of mistakes that lead to fines or other costly penalties, making eGRC well worth the investment.