US Companies Losing Ground to Europe due to Sarbanes-Oxley; Cartesis Webcast to Share how Companies Can Improve Close Processes without Sacrificing Compliance.NORWALK, Conn. -- Cartesis, the world's leading specialist in finance and performance management software, today shared details from a BPMi report that shows the gap narrowing between United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. (US) and European companies' closing and audit sign-off timetables. While European companies It may never be fully completed or, depending on its its nature, it may be that it can never be completed. However, new and revised entries in the list are always welcome. This is a list of companies from the countries in the European Union. are closing and auditing year end results more quickly than ever, Sarbanes-Oxley is blamed for slowing audit sign offs at 75 percent of the largest US corporations by an average of 21 days. "Over the last three years, over 60 percent of the largest European companies have reduced their year end reporting by an average of nine days and over 55 percent have brought forward the audit sign off date by an average of 12 days," says Crispin Read, CMO CMO See: Collateralized mortgage obligation CMO See collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO). of Cartesis. "But despite this, European companies are still closing their books almost twice as slowly as US corporations and these latest developments prove that the need to close faster is once again re-emerging as key business initiative which is getting the full attention of corporate accounting staff world-wide." "The close cycle time is regarded as a key benchmark by many Chief Financial Officers, Finance Directors and analysts," says David Jones David Jones is a common name, particularly in Wales, and there have been several well-known individuals with this name. Variations include Dave Jones and Davy Jones. , Chairman of BPM International and Director at Paragon Consulting, which compared the close cycles of 527 of the world's largest companies over the last three years. "The speed of close is symptomatic symptomatic /symp·to·mat·ic/ (simp?to-mat´ik) 1. pertaining to or of the nature of a symptom. 2. indicative (of a particular disease or disorder). 3. of the state of underlying finance processes and systems and therefore of the management processes and systems in general. Our research highlights that many companies are sacrificing speed of close to ensure regulatory SOX (1) (Schema for Object-oriented XML) An XML schema developed by Veo Systems and Muzino Communications, which was submitted to the W3C. SOX is based on DTD, but adds data typing and reuse mechanisms. compliance, particularly in the US. Adopting fast close techniques would help them re-accelerate the close." Cartesis is partnering with BPMi to share the results of the recently completed report - BPMi Close Cycle Rankings 2006 - on September 21 at 11 am ET. The "How to Achieve a Fast Close in 2006" Online event will look at the drivers and barriers to a fast close, and outline how global organizations can leverage high performance BPM solutions like Cartesis 10 to dramatically improve the speed of their close process. The event will also feature a speaker from Roche, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, who will share how his organization reduced its close from 20 to five working days with the help of Cartesis Finance. For more information or to register, go to www.cartesis.com/fastclose. Close Cycle Rankings 2006 BPM International Close Cycle Rankings 2006 are based on published and publicly available information. The date used to measure the elapsed e·lapse intr.v. e·lapsed, e·laps·ing, e·laps·es To slip by; pass: Weeks elapsed before we could start renovating. n. days between financial year end and announcement date is the date of publication of "preliminary results" in the UK or its equivalent in European and US markets. The audit date is taken from the appropriate company filing or published financial statements. A full copy of the BPMi Close Cycle Rankings 2006 is available from: http://www.bpm-international.com/closecycleranking. BPM International BPM International is Europe's only integrated Business Performance Management (BPM) consulting network. BPM is an umbrella term A term used to cover a broad category of functions rather than one specific item. In many cases, a term is so catchy that it tends to be used for technologies that are a stretch from the original concept. See middleware and virtualization. that describes all of the processes, methodologies, metrics metrics Managed care A popular term for standards by which the quality of a product, service, or outcome of a particular form of Pt management is evaluated. See TQM. and systems needed to measure and manage an organizations performance. The BPM International members are five leading BPM consultancies with operations in seven European countries and over 1,400 consultants, working with many diverse companies across multiple industries including some of Europe's largest multinational corporations
About Cartesis Cartesis is the world's leading specialist in finance and performance management software with more than 1,300 corporate customers, 600 employees and 200 consultants worldwide. Created in 1990, Cartesis provides insight, control and confidence by unifying information, people and processes at demanding multinationals like Air France Air France in full Compagnie Internationale Air France French passenger and cargo airline with more than 200 destinations in some 80 countries. It introduced supersonic Concorde service in 1976, but financial loss led the company to cease its Concorde KLM KLM Kaiserliche Marine (Enigma: Rising Tide game) KLM Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (Royal Dutch Airlines) KLM Klub Langer Menschen (German: Tall Person Club) , Cargill, Danone, Diageo, Nissan, Societe Generale and Standard Life. One in four of Fortune Global 100 companies rely on Cartesis' deep financial expertise and standard-based technology for compliance, financial consolidation, management reporting, planning, budgeting, forecasting, intercompany reconciliation; all unified in a single data-model that can be leveraged by internal and external users. Cartesis' partners include Microsoft, Accenture, Bearing Point, Ernst & Young, KPMG KPMG Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (accounting firm) KPMG Kaiser Permanente Medical Group KPMG Keiner Prüft Mehr Genau (German) KPMG Kommen Prüfen Meckern Gehen and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Cartesis has customers in 44 different countries and offices in Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Norwalk (CT), Paris, Tokyo, Toronto and Utrecht. For more information, go to www.cartesis.com. All cited names and/or trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For more information, please visit www.cartesis.com or call: Jonathan Stotts Cartesis Inc. Tel: (203) 956-2186 Email: jstotts@cartesis.com For further press information please contact: Stephanie Fallon EmergePR Tel: (617) 729-3176 Email: sfallon@emergepr.com |
|
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion