New Movaris Suite Streamlines Decision-Making for Sarbanes-Oxley Act Compliance and Establishes Strong Financial Control Management

Business Wire, Oct 4, 2004

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Certainty 8.0 Aligns Financial Control and Compliance Capabilities with Corporate Objectives

Movaris(R), a leading provider of financial control management (FCM) software, today announced Movaris Certainty(TM) 8.0, a major, new modular suite of its Certainty software for Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance and financial control management. With new functionality throughout four modules, this latest version of Certainty increases information management and delivery options for better strategic decision-making and tactical performance of compliance tasks. In addition, the multiple built-in linkages between controls, control activities and results, and related financial control information facilitate control performance, evaluations, review and testing, control self-assessments, internal auditor testing, and auditor walkthroughs.

Certainty 8.0's advanced financial control functionality not only manages all phases of Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 and 302 compliance requirements, it also creates a platform for implementing and improving a strong financial control environment. Customers select compliance and financial control functionality in the suite based on their corporate objectives, aligning compliance technology expenditures with long-range corporate governance strategies.

"To ensure a strong internal control environment and Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance, CFOs, finance executives, auditors, audit committee members and line-of-business managers need immediate access to critical financial control information," said John Van Decker, senior vice president and lead compliance analyst at META Group, a leading provider of IT research, advisory services and strategic consulting. "Rather than repeating the high costs of gathering and managing this information that incurred in year one, companies can implement a secure, scalable enterprise solution that automatically manages, distributes, and archives the appropriate level of detail for all compliance participants."

The new Financial Control Console (FCC) in Certainty 8.0 is the first compliance software application to offer finance executives and internal audit managers a management console - not just a dashboard - that they can use for driving compliance decisions and making compliance a continual state. The FCC pinpoints the status and progress of controls, issues, and exceptions, including controls that may operate properly, but may fail due to an operational issue, rather than a problem with control design. For each issue, exception, or improvement, extensive drill-down options link directly to detailed information about control activities. The FCC highlights control activities in each phase of the compliance cycle, including control documentation, results of design evaluations, results of testing, and the progress of remediations and disclosures, as well as control-related issues. In addition to resolving compliance issues, the FCC drives continual improvement in the financial control environment.

"Prompted by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we first selected Movaris to augment our internal financial control management," said Aaron Mitcham, manager, internal audit for General Nutrition Centers, Inc., a global nutritional supplements retailer. "Now, with the Financial Control Console, improving financial operations is even easier, because we can quickly identify weaknesses, and make necessary modifications in our controls, guide the review, and track financial operations issues to closure."

Certainty documents, tracks, and stores the entire body of control information to simplify compliance decision-making and audits. Certainty employs active financial controls to reduce the overall time and costs of Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance. Pre-built financial control action plans with pre-determined sequences of steps, directed to specific individuals with instructions and reference materials, to complete specific tasks, streamline evaluations, tests, self-assessments, exceptions, remediations, exception reviews and 302 certifications. Finally, Certainty 8.0 automatically detects non-compliance issues and material weaknesses, and guides the issues to resolution.

Certainty 8.0 Modules

The latest version of Certainty includes four modules for complete for Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance and improved management of financial controls, including:

--Certainty for Section 404 Compliance Management - Companies can reduce the effort required for compliance, while maintaining thorough documentation of control activities and increasing their confidence in the preparation of financial statements. Section 404 Compliance Management documents the complete body of evidence about control documentation, evaluations, tests and self assessments, and reminds control participants to complete tasks. To ensure the completion of compliance tasks, Certainty schedules and guides evaluations, self-assessments, and tests. Users can collaborate on control activities to share decision-making with other appropriate control participants. The module also collects comments and alerts managers to problems by email and home page for easy reference and improving operational effectiveness.