Hyperion Myth #9: SOX Audit Requests Are Time-consuming

No one likes to go through an audit, but some audits are more painful than others. If you’re using a system such as Oracle’s Hyperion suite of business process management and business intelligence software, you won’t be surprised to hear that the complexities of Hyperion can present difficulties when you’re undergoing a Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) audit.

Just as some audits require more work than others, however, you can make an effort to reduce the amount of work required when you do face an audit. Below, you’ll find out how.

The Myth

Our final myth in our series, Myth #9, is that SOX audit requests are time-consuming. Originally created as a response to scandals at companies such as Enron and Arthur Andersen, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a U.S. law passed in 2002 that aims to prevent fraud in accounting and other corporate activities. Sarbanes-Oxley defines a strict set of regulations that you must fulfill in order to be in compliance with the legislation.

If your organization is found to violate these regulations, you could face serious civil penalties, including the revocation of accounting licenses. That’s not to mention the massive consequences if you certify a misleading or fraudulent financial report – up to $5 million in fines and 20 years in prison.

All this is to say that Sarbanes-Oxley is a major concern for organizations that perform accounting and other financial services. It requires companies to track certain alterations to application elements. However, when it comes to software systems such as Oracle Hyperion, this is easier said than done.

For one, reconciling Hyperion metadata, rules, and report definition changes is a time-consuming, error-prone manual process. Your Hyperion logs may also not contain enough information for auditors to understand the changes to a given application or system.

The Mythbuster: Datavail’s APM Software Platform

In order to avoid the serious consequences of failing a SOX audit, your organization needs a proven solution for handling and streamlining your compliance efforts. Datavail’s Application Performance Management (APM) software platform, developed by Hyperion technologists at recent acquisition Accelatis, is the perfect solution.

Our APM platform steps in where out-of-the-box Hyperion software falls short. It maintains an automated version history of all application elements, making your records more objective and less error-prone by removing the human touch. You can create snapshots of application settings at any given point in time and compare the changes between two snapshots.

By using our software, one of Datavail’s clients massively reduced the time that it spent preparing for SOX audits. Previously, the client spent one person-week every quarter writing a report comparing the differences in rules, metadata, and report definitions between the quarter’s start and end. Now the client is now able to capture these changes with no manual effort required and generate this report automatically.

Final Thoughts

SOX audits are no laughing matter, and your organization needs to prepare for them well in advance. The ability to reduce the time that you spend preparing for a SOX audit could be the most important feature of our APM platform.

For more detail on how to debunk this and 8 other Hyperion myths, download our in-depth white paper, 9 Hyperion Myths That Are Making You Less Effective.