SOX Compliance

Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that companies must establish and maintain an internal control structure and adequate set of procedures for financial reporting. Since virtually every company continues to use spreadsheets as an integral part of their key operational and financial reporting processes, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has put a focus on the controls related to development, usage and, maintenance of these spreadsheets.

The Boardwalk Collaboration Plaform (BCP) is a unique, tabular database system which provides security, reliability, stability, auditability and scalability for existing spreadsheet-based processes. Leveraging the BCP platform to securely manage the interaction and consolidation of 100’s or 1000’s of participants interacting on spreadsheet based workflows eliminates risk and secures these processes in a compliant environment.

The Boardwalk Collaboration Plaform (BCP) is built using what you already use today—spreadsheets. With BCP, you can easily migrate your existing manual spreadsheet-based process into an enterprise quality, secure and SOX compliant collaborative system. Unlike point solutions which often make you change your process to fit rigid software architecture, only BCP lets your company fully leverage your existing processes and business logic while retaining the renowned flexibility of spreadsheets.

Sox Compliance challenges

Collaborating on financial management information has traditionally been done by emailing spreadsheets between process participants. While the flexibility of spreadsheets makes modeling business logic parameters easy, sharing this logic and collaborating on this data using email is not efficient, not secure, and carries a high level of risk for the enterprise

Consolidating information from multiple systems from various locations and from multiple individual contributors in order to develop a rolled up financial forecast or reconciliation is time consuming and puts the enterprise at risk if the information is either corrupt or not accurate

Timing is essential when managing critical enterprise information. Using manual methods of collecting data and waiting for participants to deliver information so decisions can be made is no longer optimal. Immediate visibility of all data is core to managing and maintaining a world-class information infrastructure within the enterprise

Your enterprise is dynamically changing on a daily basis. The need to have a flexible system to keep up with these changes is paramount to success. Being locked into a rigid system where few people have access and making changes creates delays and additional IT expense is suboptimal. These distractions and delays take you and your team away from being able to make rapid, daily decisions about managing the core assets of the business

The Boardwalktech Solution: BCP-Driven Sox Compliance

The Boardwalk Collaboration Plaform solution for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance lets you develop an enterprise quality “single version of the truth” for all your spreadsheet-based processes and data. At the same time, BCP lets you retain the flexibility and power of spreadsheets used for analytics, modeling, financial consolidation and reporting as well as the exchange of business information with other process participants both inside and outside of the enterprise.

Inventory all critical spreadsheet based processes on a single server in a secure location with centrally managed back-up and access control

Fully leverage and continue to use your existing Excel-based worksheets and workflows

Create a single, secure version of your spreadsheet process and workflow data in BCP. This provides a complete cell-level audit trail, change history, and comprehensive access control for your sensitive data which greatly reduces risk and moves these processes into a compliant controlled and managed environment

Seamlessly share data changes between your system(s) of record and your spreadsheet-driven business management processes with an audit trail on all exchanges

Automatically distribute, consolidate, and report information across multiple levels within the organization directly from within Excel

Allow users to manage their workflow data offline - working in isolation to mature the data and then automatically synchronize their changes with other participants within the process

Within Excel, see changes at the cell-level as you collaborate with other participants. All changes are automatically versioned by BCP which means you can compare changes between versions directly in Excel, run waterfall reports and do more extensive data analysis

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Benefits of using BCP for Sox Compliance

Establish a controlled, managed environment built specifically for working with spreadsheet based processes and workflows within the enterprise

Insure reliable data throughout your process by leveraging BCP’s enterprise quality, access-controlled single version of the truth for all spreadsheet based processes and workflows

Establish access control for both spreadsheet process data and reports so only specific people or groups see the data or reports they are allowed to thereby securing the view and management of the data

Since BCP is built upon and uses the familiar Excel environment, adoption is rapid, training is minimal, and the investment in capturing your existing spreadsheet based processes is preserved

Automating the collaboration and consolidation process means cycle times are reduced freeing up employees to focus on activities which improve operational results

Extend your processes to more participants since users can work in isolation using Excel on the desktop and securely submit their changes when ready to commit. These users do not need to be connected directly to expensive and difficult to learn web-based applications or systems of record

Eliminate the confusion of trying to gain visibility into and understand what’s changed in your spreadsheet-based data across multiple versions using BCP’ unique cell-level change management and audit trail

Reporting data is updated in real-time at the cell-level versus having to email new versions as changes are made, thus giving you immediate notice of changes so better decisions can be made

Develop dashboards on the fly to capture and report to management or specific teams and individuals data changes within each process so everyone has a clear view of the current status