Traditionally, BI software has targeted the needs of financial decision makers. BI tools initially enabled organizations to analyze financial data, to identify trends, and to drill down on report data to reveal operational transactions, as well as to assign tasks to individual employees, in order to give management the ability to implement robust auditing processes. The driver behind these functions is the ability to capture data from several data sources across an organization, and to centralize them in a data warehouse. Aside from data centralization across the organization, data warehouses allow organizations to implement and monitor data quality activities to ensure accurate data. This reduces the potential for accidental data errors.
BI tools help vendors to meet the demands of organizations that need to comply with SOX regulations, scorecards, and business activity monitoring (BAM). General reporting and analysis functionality permits organizations to take a top-down approach to management, yet still meet SOX compliance. CEOs and CFOs who are responsible for assuring compliancy and who are accountable to the SEC often aren't directly responsible for actual report generation or in-depth budgeting. Task assignment and management of processes are internal driving forces within BI, and help companies manage employee tasks and responsibilities for each financial report and function, as well as ensuring data quality. Basically, BI allows the CEO to manage internal processes and data to meet SOX compliance, and gives CEOs the ability to micromanage tasks at each level to ensure compliance, and to identify any potential errors (as well as identifying who made them, and when they were made within the process). If proper data quality processes are implemented, organizations can guarantee that data errors do not occur within the data warehouse itself and that any key stroke errors and the like are cleansed as they enter the data warehouse, before financial analyses and reporting functions are performed to meet SOX requirements.
Although, as mentioned above, BI software can help organizations meet SOX compliancy, vendors have also taken SOX issues into account when upgrading their product suites to make sure that required standards can be met on an ongoing basis. Even though many other forms of financial reporting software meet SOX compliancy, BI solutions have the added bonus of built-in workflow processes and data integration features to ensure long-term compliancy. Data within spreadsheets can be changed, and structures are not always put in place to manage those changes. However, BI software suites have built-in task assignment and audit functions for managing, distributing, and auditing data (based on where the data comes from, who has ownership of the data, and how the data has been processed).
BI tools help vendors to meet the demands of organizations that need to comply with SOX regulations, scorecards, and business activity monitoring (BAM). General reporting and analysis functionality permits organizations to take a top-down approach to management, yet still meet SOX compliance. CEOs and CFOs who are responsible for assuring compliancy and who are accountable to the SEC often aren't directly responsible for actual report generation or in-depth budgeting. Task assignment and management of processes are internal driving forces within BI, and help companies manage employee tasks and responsibilities for each financial report and function, as well as ensuring data quality. Basically, BI allows the CEO to manage internal processes and data to meet SOX compliance, and gives CEOs the ability to micromanage tasks at each level to ensure compliance, and to identify any potential errors (as well as identifying who made them, and when they were made within the process). If proper data quality processes are implemented, organizations can guarantee that data errors do not occur within the data warehouse itself and that any key stroke errors and the like are cleansed as they enter the data warehouse, before financial analyses and reporting functions are performed to meet SOX requirements.
Although, as mentioned above, BI software can help organizations meet SOX compliancy, vendors have also taken SOX issues into account when upgrading their product suites to make sure that required standards can be met on an ongoing basis. Even though many other forms of financial reporting software meet SOX compliancy, BI solutions have the added bonus of built-in workflow processes and data integration features to ensure long-term compliancy. Data within spreadsheets can be changed, and structures are not always put in place to manage those changes. However, BI software suites have built-in task assignment and audit functions for managing, distributing, and auditing data (based on where the data comes from, who has ownership of the data, and how the data has been processed).
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