When CIOs began installing ERP systems in the ’80s and ’90s, they unwittingly took something that used to belong to CFOs: financial controls. The things that accountants used to monitor manually—such as making sure that two signatures from the right people went on every check, or reconciling purchase orders against invoices—all became automated inside ERP systems. The meticulous audit trail that controllers and accountants had established over generations for demonstrating that money was being handled properly (think of black, leather-bound ledgers and long ribbons of adding machine paper) disappeared into those ERP systems without a trace—or at least without being properly documented, and certainly not to the extent now required by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a.k.a. Sarbox.
Today, CFOs want those controls back. If they don’t get them, they believe they could go to jail. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates that CFOs have to do more than simply pledge that the company’s finances are correct; they have to vouch for the processes used to add up the numbers.
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