By Quentin Brearley, Director of Product Management

Glovia International's extended ERP suite, glovia.com, along with several complementary solutions from Fujitsu sister companies, can provide IT executives with the practical solutions they need to reduce their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance burden.

Security and Audit Control
Glovia provides two dedicated modules to improve the security and audit trail of glovia.com, including:

glovia.com Security Manager
Sarbanes-Oxley requires IT executives to ensure the overall security of the IT systems, including which users have access and a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities. glovia.com Security Manager can help with compliance by enabling system administrators to grant or restrict end-user access to glovia.com functionality.

The module enables administrators to define group or role-based security profiles, such as "AP Clerk," as well as determine all of the access privileges and rights for that role. The solution also permits the creation of individual-level exception-based security profiles. For example, the role of "AP Clerk" can be customized so that all users have data entry rights but only one user can access glovia.com's payment processing functionality. This allows administrators to increase overall system security while ensuring the separation of roles required by Sarbanes-Oxley.

Security Manager provides powerful reporting and inquiry capability that allow administrators to see quickly which end-users have access to what functionality as well as how frequently they access that functionality. The tool delivers a full security audit trail that can be used when IT executives need to attest to the end-user access to their glovia.com system.

glovia.com Audit Manager
glovia.com Audit Manager logs the full history of changes to key business data elements within glovia.com, thus providing comprehensive audit trail for data required for Sarbanes-Oxley. The solution works with any external application that feeds the glovia.com database.

Audit Manager enables administrators to define the level of control required — from an individual field, an individual column, or entire database table and provides comprehensive historical inquiry capabilities. The module tracks any changes to the glovia.com database, including:

• The data and time of the change
• The user that performed the change
• The type of change (e.g., add, change, or delete)
• The value before the change as well as the new value
• The keys of the table that changed

Document and Records Management
Sarbanes-Oxley also requires companies to improve their document management capabilities to ensure that established business processes are followed and to support the increased audit requirements for financial reports. Several document management solutions are offered by Glovia and its sister company, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., including:

glovia.com Publisher
glovia.com Publisher supports both Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for a document management system — ensuring the proper documentation, communication, and execution of approved business processes and supporting the preparation of financial reports by indexing and linking documents to specific transactions.

Publisher enables users to create, manage, and publish critical documents and records easily, and it ensures the delivery of the information to the right person, in the right format, regardless of the originating system or application. The module's secure document repository and powerful search capabilities enable users to find the documents and supporting information they need quickly and simply. Documents can be delivered in a wide variety of ways, including any network-enabled printer or fax machine, email application, via the web, wireless devices, or PDAs.

Reporting and Risk Management
The increased reporting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley can be addressed by several glovia.com solutions. These modules provide managers and business process owners with real-time access to critical information, improve communication, and support the creation of business processes.

glovia.com ActionDESK
glovia.com ActionDESK is an exception-based activity management tool that provides users with a real-time view of business activities that affect their day-to-day responsibilities. ActionDESK provides users with a prioritized list of items of interest, whether a simple alert that informs them of a change or an action prompt that requires them to resolve an issue.

ActionDESK supports process flows by delivering timely information about exceptions as well as provides users with the tools they need to resolve highlighted issues. The module supports the definition of both group-based and individual-based roles and responsibilities, which provides businesses with the flexibility they need to support customized and complex business processes.

Cognos
Cognos provides the most comprehensive and fully integrated set of business intelligence and reporting solutions in the industry. The suite of applications shares common framework services such as security, metadata, and user portal.

Glovia offers several Cognos solutions as an integrated component of glovia.com that provide companies with the real-time reporting and information visibility they require to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. Glovia offers the following Cognos solutions:

• Impromptu: Report authors use Impromptu to create business-context reports. Report authors can author virtually any report using Impromptu's superior frame-based reporting interface. Report data can come from any source, and reports can be deployed to Impromptu users across LANs and WANs, as well as to mobile users.
• Impromptu Web Reports: Impromptu Web Reports uses reports created in Impromptu and delivers managed, print-ready reports across the web for large groups of report consumers. Users can subscribe to published reports and customize them to meet their specific needs.
• PowerPlay: Users can perform their own multidimensional analysis, create reports, and share them to make better decisions. Anyone at any business or technical skill level can explore large volumes of summarized data with sub-second response times.
• NoticeCast: This application proactively delivers business intelligence to users — based on criteria they define — as events happen. NoticeCast delivers this time-critical information to decision makers through automatic email messages to desktops, digital cell phones or wireless devices such as PDAs.
• Visualizer: Helps users communicate complex business data quickly and intuitively using sophisticated visual reports. The application enables users to display multiple measures simultaneously and create dashboards, which allows decision makers to see how diverse information correlates.

Business Process Management
A critical item for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is the definition and creation of established process flows. Glovia International, through its sister company Fujitsu Software Corporation, can provide a comprehensive Business Process Management solution that enables companies to design, test, automate, and monitor the execution of key business processes as part of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Interstage® Business Process Manager™
Interstage Business Process Manager is a full-featured, comprehensive Business Process Management (BPM) solution that provides companies with the ability to create, control, change and measure processes with ease. The application's modular, open standards-based architecture allows for straightforward integration into existing environments.

Interstage Business Process Manager enables companies to streamline and automate repetitive tasks, which reduces error rates and ensures that approved business processes are always followed. The application also provides users with the tools to manage and monitor the performance of critical processes in real-time and alerts them to significant events.

The Prudent Way to Minimize Risk
Sarbanes-Oxley has dramatically altered the world of business and its impact is only just beginning to be felt. The law has raised the bar for companies and requires more accuracy, more accountability, and more openness.

While Sarbanes-Oxley was originally viewed as something only finance needed to worry about, it has grown into a pressing business issue for many departments. IT organizations have become increasingly involved in compliance as CEOs and CFOs depend on the applications, systems, and data that IT manages.

At the same time, many companies have not properly involved their IT organizations in their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance activities. IT executives must take the time to familiarize themselves with the business issues behind Sarbanes-Oxley as well as the technology solutions that can be cost-effectively deployed to minimize the impact of compliance on their department and their company.

Glovia International, a leading provider of extended ERP solutions for manufacturers, can help IT executives make prudent investments to achieve compliance while minimizing ongoing costs and improving operations.