The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is the cornerstone of federal regulators’ financial accounting reform and attempts to protect investors by holding executives of public companies accountable for misrepresentation of financial information. HandySoft Corp. and portal vendor Plumtree have just announced the ‘Sarbanes-Oxley Accelerator’ to help publicly traded companies comply with the 2002 Act.
Claggett
HandySoft COO Stuart Claggett explained, “With the SEC’s unanimous vote detailing new Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, it’s imperative that companies start addressing these complex reforms, using the timeline extension to ensure that the audit process is comprehensive, timely, and accurate. To address these challenges we have developed rapidly deployable, process-based solutions that reduce time-to-compliance, improve audit quality, and provide public companies with the flexibility to deal with future regulations.”
Auditing
The Accelerator helps establish internal controls and reporting procedures, while providing a platform for collaborating with auditors and board members. The Accelerator leverages HandySoft’s ‘BizFlow’ platform and is built on Plumtree’s Enterprise Web Suite.
Dissent
Speaking at KPMG LLP’s Global Energy Conference in Houston, Halliburton Energy president John Gibson expressed a contrarian view of the Act, “Sarbanes-Oxley is the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen. We are spending more time doing certification processes that don’t improve internal control or the quality of anything. It is a ‘letter-signing’ activity that appears to be ‘blame assignment’ as opposed to change in corporate commitment to integrity. If shareholders could see how much money is being spent to say ‘I’m honest’, they would be appalled.”
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