Case
Energy sector - Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
Many of our projects address critical and strategic issues for our customers who, therefore, choose to not disclose their name.
Environment
A large energy group had to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley act by end 2006. The compliance was expected to increase both timeliness and accurateness of financial reporting, something critical for a company whose shares are exchanged on the American stock market. To this end, the client wanted to ensure the IT infrastructure was aligned with the SOX compliance requirements and, if necessary, to take corrective actions to do so.
Solution
Trasys has been assigned for executing a series of consulting activities within the different companies of the client aimed at reviewing the completeness and accuracy of the IT processes, applications and end-user tools. Trasys’ consultants undertook a full documentation of the main processes, each documentation having to include flowcharts, narratives, rationales and the control activities in place. In particular, the design of the reported control activities was systematically assessed with regard to the objectives set by the client. As all subsidiaries didn’t have documented processes yet, a large part of the project consisted of inquiring users and IT staff as well about the current practices, formalizing them upon pre-defined templates and validating them in a recursive way until acceptance by the internal control department.
Benefits
Every client’s company involved in the project moved forward in the direction of a better control of their IT processes, and the understanding of their criticality regarding the financial management of the organization.