C-SOX: 4 tools you need to know about

China SOX will have a radical impact on the Chinese business environment. The Standard will require a new approach to risk management, internal control, and communication with all company stakeholders. The IT department will play an important role in driving C-SOX compliance.

Lots of IT systems that support an enterprise, from email to ERP to financial systems. This post will quickly look at a category of high-impact technologies that are not currently widely used in corporate China.

These include:

1) Document and knowledge management. Hundreds of internal control documents are created during a C-SOX implementation project. These documents cover the processes, procedures and policies of all areas of the company and become the foundation for the internal control system. Therefore, it is critical to have a document management system in place that allows for the centralized creation and management of this information. The document management system includes authoring, review, approval, publishing, editing, version control and retiring documents.

2) Employee performance management. Company management has to set internal control objectives and manage them throughout the year. A performance management system should be used to record, manage and report on the goals and objectives that are set by the company. There are three main parts to a performance management system: defining, managing and reporting on the goals.

3) Testing and Assessment tools. C-SOX compliance involves aligning operations to be predictable, consistent and validated. By implementing and maintaining a testing and assessment management tool, an organization can accurately track and report the state of compliance and respond promptly to requests for C-SOX compliance audits.

4) Online learning. E-learning is a great opportunity for companies to save time and money in their C-SOX implementations. Online courses are high-quality, interactive tools that can provide multiple business benefits to companies who are use these tools.

These technologies are “high impact” because they are generally deployed widely across the organization and are used frequently by employees. They are not as complicated or as costly to implement as other enterprise systems. Finally, they can be used together as a suite to accelerate China SOX compliance.

We just published a detailed white paper on these technologies, which is available on our website. Click to learn more about China SOX compliance tools.