Leveraging Sox to Optimize Shareholder Value

Compliance with SOX regulations is not optional, and many organizations have had little choice but to invest significant financial resources into non-value-adding process documentation, employee training, IT systems, and external consulting. But aside from passive compliance benefits, these investments have brought little reward. Learn how leading organizations leverage their compliance investments to reap ancillary rewards.

Key Findings

• Early adoption of SOX requirements enabled best-practice organizations to leverage compliance efforts to optimize shareholder value.
• Best-practice organizations did not approach SOX as an ad hoc, tactical problem, but rather as a broader opportunity to improve business processes.
• Best-practice organizations integrated governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) processes.
• Best-practice organizations utilize a continuous improvement approach to realize significant decreases in their annual internal compliance costs.
• Compliance functions within best-practice organizations not only improved compliance processes but also enhanced their roles as strategic business partners.
• Best-practice organizations establish flexible and sustainable compliance programs that continuously evolve with changing business requirements.
• Best-practice organizations evaluate GRC technology systems and processes from a holistic, enterprise-wide perspective.
• Organizations use a combination of legacy systems, in-house applications, and off-the-shelf solutions to automate their compliance processes.
• Best-practice organizations maintain a compliance content repository that enables collaboration and the sharing of information such as communication and training material, process documentation, calendars and milestones, and SEC support records.

Sponsor and Partner Organizations

A listing of the sponsor organizations in this study, as well as the best-practice (“partner”) organizations that were benchmarked for their compliance activities.

Executive Summary

A bird’s-eye view of the study, presenting the study focus, the methodology used throughout the course of the study, key findings, and a profile of participants. The findings are explored in detail in the following sections.

Study Findings

An in-depth look at the findings of this study. The findings are supported by quantitative data and qualitative examples of practices employed by the partner organizations.

Partner Organization Case Studies

Background information on the partner organizations, as well as their innovative practices in sox compliance.

Glossary of Terms