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IT strategy - I, as in, I will survive.
(From Financial Director)
Byline: Tom Berry, deputy editor of Financial Director.
There won't be many fingernails left unchewed in the IT departments of UK businesses in 2005. During the year, international financial reporting standards will claim their first scalps, foreign companies listed in the US will have to comply fully with Sarbanes-Oxley, and the EU 8th Directive on Company Law is expected to demand greater oversight and better internal controls in company boardrooms.
The key to managing all the regulation and legislation lies in how companies implement and manage their IT systems. Financial and operational data, if it has been collated properly, should make compliance easy. In the best-prepared companies, finance and IT directors will have already worked together to configure financial systems so when the big red compliance button is pressed the relevant financial and management reports are generated automatically and a big tick will go in the auditor's and regulator's notebooks. These companies can then get on with the job of creating wealth for shareholders.
But it is rarely that simple. New financial software systems and bolt-on applications for compliance are costing businesses millions and consuming thousands of hours in preparation. Companies that have dedicated money and manpower to compliance through IT over the past months will survive. Those that haven't may find their technology lacking and share prices diving downwards.
But who is going to get the blame when these IT compliance systems go wrong? It is almost certain that some will fail spectacularly over the next few months. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been vocal about sending CEOs and CFOs to jail if they fall foul of Sarbanes-Oxley. But what will happen to the IT guys who put the failing systems in?
The sceptical might say that IT directors who don't carry the can have two options when faced with failure. They can either blame IT consultants hired by the business (consultants are too expensive, like to complicate things to make themselves more money, and IT projects should be handled in-house). Otherwise, failure is the fault of the finance department (systems departments are under too much pressure to make cutbacks and dunderheaded finance people don't understand IT anyway).
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