SOX Brings New Business Opportunities
THIS YEAR’S EXPANSION of federally mandated financial reporting requirements to include publicly held small to midsize businesses (SMBs) has not only opened up new business opportunities for smart channel partners, it can also help them become better organizations in their own right.
In keeping with Section 404 of the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investment Protection Act, aka the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (or simply “SOX”), managers of public companies with a market cap of $75 million or less now face a looming December 2007 deadline to file reports asserting the effectiveness of their companies’ internal controls and financial reporting procedures. And starting December 2008, these assertions have to be backed up and attested to by outside auditors.
In addition to creating a new cadre of compliance consultants and helping to grow a lot of existing accounting firms, this expansion of SOX “has generated a wave of technology products,” says Andrew Levi, founder, president, and CEO of Dallas-based tech solutions provider Aztec Systems Inc.
SECURITY, CONTROL ARE KEY
Thanks to SOX, demand among SMBs (as well as their larger corporate brethren) is growing for solutions “that fundamentally boil down to security, access control, user authentication, and business records management,” says Eric Linxweiler, senior vice president for sales and managed services at Logicalis Inc., a Bloomfield Hills, Mich.- based provider of technology solutions.
