Within many organisations, it seems the 'tail is wagging the dog'. Companies are producing many of the required reports as a matter of course but not addressing the issues of 'putting into place' the processes that should be present and which should end with the creation of the relevant output.
In addition, the benefits that should be derived from these processes are not being realised as the activities are still viewed as 'grudge' procedures and not ones that bring any positive results, nor do they form a part of the strategic intent of the company.
There is also a perception that nobody is interested in analysing the outputs either inside or outside the company, thus it is not a key focus of the business executives.
Examples of the above could be the production of the employment equity report, which should be a natural output of employment equity activities and processes, but seldom is; the skills development report that is so often produced in isolation without any thoughts as to how that organisation can utilise the levies charged for their own internal and future staff development programmes as well as address the skills shortage issue that are so prevalent in the country; and the sustainability report, which should address environmental and social issues, key issues for the shareholders and investors when evaluating the long-term viability of these organisations and again an area not taken as seriously as it should be by senior management.
The 'practise what you preach' adage is still not being applied and this could be to the detriment of these companies in the long term, unless the necessary changes exampled above are addressed timeously.
The handling of the issues of governance and compliance in today's world has become a major issue for companies. Furthermore, the situation is not going to improve in the short term, since the increased legislation expected to be enacted this year alone, is expected to increase the 'hassle' factors involved with these activities.
"With the above in mind, Satori has developed comQuest, a tool that will significantly help with the task of corporate governance and compliance reporting, removing much of the frustration associated with this activity," commented Di King, MD of Satori Group.
"With Satori's comQuest tool, structuring and controlling the information gathering process, compiling the reports is far less time-consuming," added King. "Thus, the utilisation of this tool could free-up decision-makers from some of their 'administrative-type' chores and allow them more time to analyse the content of these reports. Furthermore, this base of knowledge should provide a better and more enlightened basis for future planning and the subsequent inclusion of the principles of corporate governance into their strategies."
For further information, please contact Di King at telephone (011) 234 3132; fax (011) 234 3138; e-mail dking@satorigroup.co.za.
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Satori Group SA (Pty) Ltd is the local operation of Satori Group, Inc, a leader in providing pervasive corporate performance management (CPM) solutions and business intelligence (BI) software to the South African market.
Available from Satori is comQuest, a tool that operates within the corporate governance sector of the market and helps to streamline the collection, management and reporting processes of governance and sustainability information. ComQuest is a simple, flexible, Web-based application that handles qualitative and quantitative data, and supporting files and documentation. According to one of the larger auditing/accounting firms, the system eliminates many of the frustrations that previously occurred with these 'governance' processes.
Satori Group is also South Africa's sole agent for proCube, a multi-dimensional database aimed at eliminating the frustrations found in large Excel models that have been developed to serve data analysis, budgeting and reporting applications.
Satori Group SA's customer base includes organisations such as African Bank, AngloGold Ashanti, Barloworld, Fiat, JD Group, Komatsu, Mutual & Federal, Nedbank Limited, Northam Platinum, SAB Miller, Sanlam, Sizwe Medical Services, Standard Bank and Swiss Re Africa.
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