Something to Consider September 2018 – Is Digital Transformation Driving up the Cost of SOX?

Is the rise of digital driving up the cost of SOX?

The last thing we want to hear as a business is that costs are rising in any context, so headlines about the cost of SOX going up are an unwelcome sight. According to the latest Protiviti survey, 50% of large public businesses reported a rise in SOX costs from the previous year. But what does this actually mean, and is it really a bad thing?

As with most business issues, perspective is key – the cost of SOX, whether increasing or decreasing, is not enough on its own to tell us about the state of play. The Digital Transformation occurring in our businesses mean we are in a constantly evolving, transforming and developing environment and our controls and processes are not immune to this disruption. Costs changing are an indicator that something else is going on. If our efficiency and effectiveness are in line with that, rising costs of our controls and compliance are a less worrying state to be in than nothing happening at all!

We’ve put some thoughts together on why headline grabbers about rising costs can skew the focus with measurements that in isolation don’t give us the full picture. You can find it here​​​

Our ‘Something To Consider’ snippets are framed as small, digestible, ‘dashes of insight’ around the pillars of what we define as “World Class Finance” – Process Optimization, Financial Control and Compliance, and Risk Assurance, all underpinned by technology enablement and integration.