Cartesis.

Cartesis, one of the leading specialists in finance and performance management software, was planning a May release for Cartesis Governance, a new product that Cartesis says makes it "the first performance management vendor to broaden the platform for performance management to include integrated financial Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) capabilities as part of its suite."

(In late April, Cartesis agreed to be acquired by Business Objects. A Cartesis spokeswoman said the deal would have no impact on this release and that "the scope and robustness of the new release" was a factor in the merger.)

By building on the increasing synergy between the performance management, financial reporting and compliance requirements, Cartesis says it will provide its global customer base with a single framework for performance management, reporting and sustainable compliance. That, in turn, will improve financial reporting and close processes and reduce the cost of compliance by integrating these activities more tightly with periodic report preparation and analysis.

"This expansion of our our suite represents significant growth opportunity for Cartesis and furthers our commitment to solving problems for the CFO," said Didier Benchimol, CEO of Cartesis, in an announcement.

Cartesis Governance supports a range of financial compliance legislation, including Sarbanes-Oxley, Loi de Securite Financiere, J-SOX, Tabaksblat and so-called Euro-SOX requirements, which will be implemented under local member state law through 2008. A combination of internal development and third-party technology from BWise, a provider of GRC software solutions, Cartesis Governance will integrate with Cartesis Finance and Cartesis Analytics applications.

Cartesis Governance "will deliver the framework for risk and control, including control testing, documentation, issue and task management, compliance reporting and dashboards needed to address global compliance requirements more easily," the company added in its announcement.

"The financial GRC and performance management solutions on the market are not integrated," says Kathleen Wilhide, research director, Compliance and Performance Management solutions, at research firm IDC. "Finance and compliance teams are chartered with rationalizing key controls to reduce the burden of compliance, and have begun to manually integrate compliance and financial reporting processes.

"As tighter integration between compliance and reporting solutions becomes available, this enables a more unified approach to finance GRC, performance management and reporting, which will result in substantial cost, reliability and efficiency benefits for companies."

Cartesis has more than 1,300 corporate customers in 44 countries and offices in Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Norwalk (Conn.), Paris, Tokyo, Toronto and Utrecht. For more information, go to www.cartesis.com/en.