SAP offers Sarbanes-Oxley certification for auditors

Business solutions provider SAP Africa is to run certification courses for internal and external auditors on the application within SAP solutions of Sarbanes-Oxley - the financial and accounting disclosure act passed in the US in 2002 and now accepted as a global standard for corporate governance.

SAP Africa's education solution manager, Jaco van Zyl, says that while most auditors are steeped in the principles and requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley, very few are familiar either with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software or the ways in which Sarbanes-Oxley functionality is embedded in that software.

"Most large corporates and medium-sized companies, internationally and in SA, now run their businesses on SAP ERP software. Auditors therefore need to know where in that software to find the information that accurately reflects their clients' governance and regulatory compliance. But auditors are not usually trained SAP users so, without help, they can spend a great deal of very costly auditing time experimenting with the system.

"To reduce these and other auditing costs, SAP has gone to considerable lengths to provide reporting and other tools within its solutions specifically for the use of auditors. The tools are focused on imposing compliance throughout an organisation's operations - and even beyond its boundaries, across its entire value chain.

"They are therefore the repository of critical auditing information - and, accordingly, enormously powerful apparatus for auditors.

"So, our courses are geared to help auditors understand the influence of ERP software on their customers' governance and regulatory compliance capabilities, assist them in finding their way around ERP systems in general, and enable them to access and assess the information in those systems as quickly as possible."

The courses, which blend e-learning and classroom training, culminate in a three-hour examination - giving those who pass an internationally accepted certification.

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The course begins with a four-hour e-learning corporate governance overview with a specific focus on auditing in the Sarbanes-Oxley context - followed by a four-hour e-learning overview of SAP solutions in the context of auditing and Sarbanes-Oxley.

A one-hour Web self-assessment then establishes delegate progress.

Then comes a five-day classroom session in which delegates learn, hands-on, the processes of auditing using SAP software - followed by a three-day day course on management of internal controls using SAP tools.

Training concludes with an eight-hour e-learning session on auditing within the SAP Business Warehouse and Strategic Enterprise Management modules.

"Apart from the obvious benefit of this kind of certification in terms of enabling auditors to reduce costs, it confers a huge advantage in giving auditors' clients the confidence of knowing that their auditors understand their systems and therefore their business - and that any audits done will be directly relevant to the strategic objectives of the business," Van Zyl says.

SAP Africa is offering the courses at its standard rate for SAP training and, as Van Zyl points out: "The e-learning component means that delegates can study in their own time - making the courses even more cost-effective."