Sarbanes-Oxley compliance may prove to be a big headache for your IT organization.  The Act encourages higher ethical standards, more reliable reporting, and better governance in publicly-held companies, and Section 404 has significant implications for IT controls, assessment, and reporting. If you have all of your processes in place and you have evidence that they're operating effectively, you're in good shape for Sarbanes-Oxley. But what if you haven't documented your processes and your evidence? Pain without gain?

That need not be the case. You can take this opportunity to improve your IT organization's operations and make it easier to manage. How? IT management information is power. Articulate your processes so that the evidence you need for Sarbanes-Oxley is also useful and accessible information for IT management. And along the way, if your processes have been rather casual, you can take the opportunity to formalize them, preferably consistent with ITIL practices. That way, your operation will work more reliably and predictably. After all, if you have to report, why not report good news?

We can help you standardize your processes, tie them to your company's control requirements, and develop a presentation platform that presents the evidence to management and auditors with minimum intrusion into your operations. And we'll work with you to avoid "overdocumenting". We'll be happy to talk to you about your compliance matters.

"We were able to stay focused on our core business objectives because Avatar provided hands-on program management expertise ranging from our needs assessment, proposed solutions, budget approval, vendor selection and management through the implementation of our integrated accounting and CRM solution."

Martin Vaughan
Vice President,
New Business Development,
Management Ventures, Inc (MVI)