News
Prodiance Delivers Enhanced Workflow Capabilities to Automate SOX 404 Business Processes
New Version Helps Organizations Automate Financial Reporting Processes for End-user Computing
Pleasanton, Calif. – December 20, 2005 – Prodiance Corporation, a world leader in delivering comprehensive business solutions and best practices for improving compliance with today’s corporate, regulatory and legal mandates, today announced Version 3.3 of the Prodiance Enterprise Compliance Platform. This new version delivers key enhancements in workflow functionality designed to help organizations automate key financial business processes while ensuring better visibility, control, and improved productivity.
Ensuring Compliance for End-user Computing Processes
Enhanced workflow functionality in the new release automates compliance-driven business processes such as monthly and quarterly financial reporting, reconciliations, consolidations, and their associated review and approval cycles. Within public organizations, these financial processes are dictated by approved internal controls under Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Section 404 mandates, and often involve uncontrolled spreadsheets and other electronic records outside the ERP system. By automating these business processes using the Prodiance Enterprise Compliance platform with the newly enhanced workflow technology, organizations can insert the right control checkpoints into the process to ensure that what actually happens on a day-to-day basis enforces approved SOX 404 controls. For example, quarterly and annual accounting and close-the-books processes can be defined according to pre-defined and approved control registers and process narratives, enforced with built-in business rules, executed so that work tasks are assigned to appropriate users or groups, and fully-traceable to satisfy ongoing internal and external audits.
Many organizations use spreadsheets within these key financial disclosure processes, and the Prodiance solution orchestrates the right work activities, reviews, approvals, alerts and notifications to ensure compliance on an ongoing basis. Robust business process management (BPM) and workflow functionality is a key requirement for organizations striving to achieve these goals, and the Prodiance Enterprise Compliance platform combined with best practices developed through client engagements delivers a comprehensive solution that satisfies auditor requirements.
Highlights of the new Prodiance release include:
- Enhanced Conditional Workflow Logic - Conditional information such as risk factor or financial data (EPS, revenue, etc.) can automatically be analyzed in real-time, and workflow logic can be adapted as a result of the analysis.
- Enhanced Support for Embedded Workflows – The Prodiance system is designed to handle complex business processes involving serial, parallel, looping and embedded (or nested) workflows. Workflow configuration is performed in Microsoft Visio, and no coding is required to create new or update workflow templates.
- Linking to Control Registers – Reference documents such as SOX 404 control registers, policies, and procedures can be annotated and linked to workflow tasks to ensure users fully understand and have immediate access to ever-changing compliance mandates.
- New Built-in PDF Generator – Approved financial spreadsheets and other supporting electronic evidence (audit trails, forms, emails, meeting minutes, audit reports, signoff sheets, etc.) can be rendered into a final format for archival of historical data without the need for client additional software.
- Expanded Electronic Signature Support – Regulatory compliant electronic signatures are now available directly from within a variety of office applications (including Excel, Word, Visio, Powerpoint, and Adobe PDF). Electronic signatures for PDFs are designed according to the stringent Food & Drug Administration 21 CFR Part 11 requirements.
- Support for Adobe Acrobat 7 (including electronic forms)
Sustaining SOX Compliance and Driving Down the Cost
“Our clients have been dealing with a wide spectrum of challenges for sustaining SOX compliance, from auditing and tracking changes to key financial data (contained in spreadsheets), controlling and gaining visibility into financial close activities, automating key compliance-driven business processes, to managing electronic evidence to support ongoing audits, and speeding legal discovery efforts,” said Dr. Soheil Saadat, president and CEO of Prodiance Corporation. “Prodiance delivers an integrated solution to address these challenges, enabling organizations to get up and running quickly while establishing an infrastructure to make compliance and inherent part of the everyday business processes within the end-user computing environment.”
Availability
Version 3.3 of the Prodiance Enterprise Compliance Platform is shipping and available immediately, including the Prodiance Enterprise Content Manager (ECM) and Prodiance Business Process Manager (BPM) modules. Additional enhancements to Version 3.3 of Prodiance Remediation Services for Microsoft Excel (RSME) for spreadsheet controls and remediation is targeted for availability in Q1 2006.
About Prodiance
Prodiance Corporation is a world leader in delivering comprehensive business solutions and best practices for improving compliance with today’s corporate, regulatory and legal mandates, and boosting productivity for knowledge workers. With proven technologies and solutions for end-user computing and financial spreadsheet remediation, managing electronic evidence, business process management, and federated search and eDiscovery, Prodiance leverages a 15-year history in delivering solutions for highly-regulated markets. Organizations across the financial, legal, real estate, telecommunications, entertainment, aerospace and defense, health care, educational, manufacturing, and engineering & construction markets have trusted Prodiance as a strategic partner to achieve their goals – driving down the cost of compliance, automating key business processes, and better leveraging corporate knowledge assets. Prodiance Corporation is an independent, privately held corporation based in Pleasanton, California. Additional news and information about Prodiance solutions, products and services is available at www.prodiance.com or by calling 1-866-569-5678.
Prodiance PR Contact:
Eric
Perry
(866) 569.5678
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