Sarbanes-Oxley

Sector Outlook, Fourth Quarter, 2003

Over the last year, compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley act has been a big time sink--er, required significant resources--for people in charge of corporate operations: people like the COO, CFO, and CIO.

Never ones to miss an opportunity, the large ERP vendors have announced products designed to help them automate some of the tasks they have had to perform. This "Sarbanes-Oxley" software has usually been little more than a mechanism for documenting the processes that are embedded in the ERP software already.

Is there more that can be done? Or is all this time and effort simply a new cost of doing business, what one CEO friend called, the Sarbanes-Oxley tax?

A number of small companies are saying that indeed there is more. They argue that Sarbanes-Oxley can be significantly more than a new form of ISO 9000 and that compliance can even bring benefits.

In 2004, B2B Analysts, Inc., will make Sarbanes-Oxley compliance a focus area. We will be reviewing the efforts of small and large companies to provide software that facilitates Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Projects within a focus area are sponsored. Companies who are interested in our research provide us with funding and, in return, get early access to our reports. Naturally, we do not accept any money from companies that are covered in the report or who might be covered.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of this report, please contact us.