Movaris.

Movaris, a provider of financial performance management and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance solutions, has brought out Movaris OneClose, which the San Jose, Calif.-based company says is the first-ever financial closing solution to link financial controls and close tasks to financial statements. The company says the solution, backed by several process patents, synchronizes the activities performed during the financial close and reporting process. In doing so, it creates a system of record for financial statements, the close and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

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Eric Keller, Movaris' president and CEO, noted in an interview that the close is still almost always a manual process, even at very large companies. While sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business performance management (BPM) vendors have made vast strides in aggregating data and allowing companies to do analytics, there has been no way to ensure that all of those numbers are meaningful and correct, he adds.

Most companies currently complete their Sarbanes-Oxley internal controls assessment after they close for the quarter or the year, he notes, delaying the discovery of failed key controls. Indeed, re-evaluations triggered by the assessment are a common cause of material weakness disclosures and financial reinstatements.

OneClose also creates the first secure, auditable system of record of this "last mile" of financial reporting processes, from ERP and consolidation activities through EDGAR filings with the SEC, says Frank Mara, Movaris vice president of marketing. This file can be sent as an electronic "binder," a ZIP file with pertinent attachments that can literally be put on a CD and handed to outside auditors.

In a customer survey completed recently, Movaris said that OneClose beta customers reported a 12 percent projected saving in audit fees, a 25 percent reduction in time for internal finance teams and increased accuracy. Using the system results in "far greater confidence" in releasing financials to the outside world, Keller says.

He adds that OneClose can be used either to pull data or to push it, say to a dashboard, proving a "continuum of solutions for customers." Movaris is in partnership discussions with major ERP and BPM vendors such as Hyperion, Cognos, Oracle, SAP and Business Objects, he says.

OneClose is available to existing or prospective Movaris customers and can be deployed in different configurations to do reporting-entity financials or corporate financials. Movaris, which says it has 70 corporate customers, puts the installation cost for OneClose at $200,000 to $1.4 million, depending on the size of the organization and whether or not the company is already a customer.

Web: www.movaris.com

Material for this column has been developed in most cases from promotional items supplied by the companies, which have not paid to appear.