OVERVIEW

During the bubble years of the 1990s leading up to the financial scandals and subsequent enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley, it seemed like the only strategy in the minds of managers and directors was meeting investor expectations with a steady flow of increasing quarterly profits and revenues. Reality set in as failures in corporate governance turned the accounting profession into a tailspin with one scandal after another. Economic reality is not a steady drumbeat of making the numbers every quarter. In fact, the pace of economic conditions and competition is more challenging than ever as balance sheets are comprised of knowledge assets and intangibles. Corporate management is now required to operate and plan on almost a real-time basis. All businesses require a framework for managing enterprise risk that employs greater strategic focus and organizational communication.

At the time Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted, organizations had been morphing along with a wide range of technology tools and applications. There have been attempts at business intelligence dashboards which spawned an array of measurements. Concepts like balanced scorecards have gained traction. There is renewed emphasis on operational excellence and greater emphasis on strategy and its execution. All of a sudden, Section 404 required that management assess internal control and document its assessment and processes. This created the development of more technology tools and solutions to help corporations comply with certification of quarterly financial reports, solidification of internal control, and the requirement for disclosure on a real-time basis.

Compliance efforts have been going forward on a continuous...