BPM aids Sarbanes-Oxley compliance

The biggest "pain point" companies have sustaining Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance is enforcing internal controls for those processes that are highly manual and span multiple systems, reports the Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal.

Business process management (BPM) software provides companies with an internal control framework that enforces SOX-related policies, procedures and laws across all of the automated activity and all of the manual activity that impacts SOX compliance.

It is hard to enforce what can`t be seen. While business rules have been put in place to make sure that activities inside of an ERP application follow SOX rules, the majority of business activities that affect compliance occur outside of the application.

The benefits of BPM can be remarkable. However, capturing the inherent complexities and dynamic nature of business processes is often a tremendous struggle.

According to Line56, work processes tend to evolve iteratively in response to various situations. Often struggles ensue when IT and business managers convene to apply BPM technology to these changing workflows.

To initiate BPM projects, organisations typically start out with detailed process maps that visually capture the flow of activities or business rules that cause different paths to be followed.

Metastorm, a provider of BPM software for modelling, automating, integrating and improving both human and system-based processes, together with Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation and provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community, announced a partnership that will deliver a complete end-to-end research platform.

Finextra.com states that Metastorm BPM will be immediately available as a new product integrated into the Thomson One Institutional Research platform, which delivers critical information and analytical tools to help research analysts make informed recommendations and produce effective research reports.

As a component of Thomson ONE, Metastorm BPM will provide Thomson Financial`s customers with the tools needed to establish an integration link between the Thomson Workflow Management tool and the First Call "authorless" submission system, as well as the Thomson Research Authoring Solution powered by Capco.