Financial management.

PeopleSoft has brought out Enterprise Financial Management 8.8, which it says offers significant improvements in a variety of areas: more self-service capabilities; more embedded analytics; and new compliance and regulatory enhancements that support broad Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and compliance specifically with Section 404, the section on internal controls.

In the self-service area, a CFO portal feature improves self-service capabilities and extends applications such as e-settlements for invoices to line-of-business users, said Chris Leone, vice president of product strategy and EPM (enterprise performance management) solutions for PeopleSoft. In the credit and collections area, the application provides users with the ability to automate key functions and get feedback on parameters they have established, he added in an interview.

Analytics are now "part and parcel of the transaction systems," Leone said. "In the contracts application, you can collect information on the people you do business with. As you're looking at contract renewal, you can do forecasting on the revenue incrementally received from that vendor."

The release also highlights the XBRL taxonomy, making it part of the core technology for the first time. While there is no regulatory mandate for preparers to submit financial reports in XBRL now, "we want to be on the leading edge," Leone said. The system also allows for the automatic booking of accounting entries back to the general ledger.

PeopleSoft claims that the release offers improvements in total cost of ownership, the result of benchmarking key areas such as usability, performance and productivity. Task completion rates have been boosted by as much as 44 percent, he said.

On Sarbanes-Oxley, "We're supporting the major control areas and systemizing internal control points in the transaction systems," Leone said. "We support the ability to monitor compliance and the ability to document areas of risk, and how to mitigate those risks."

Web: www.peoplesoft.com