News Scan

Noteworthy

Governance Interest Groups Join Forces

In a move that promises to expand the resources available to CFOs struggling to put governance principles into practice, the Compliance Consortium has merged with and become part of the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG). The organizations share similar aims: The consortium is a group of software and service providers that promotes effective corporate governance, compliance and risk management, and the OCEG provides a framework for implementing and managing compliance and ethics programs.

"The Compliance Consortium has been focused on the important topic of identifying best practices for applying technology to governance, risk, compliance and ethics management processes," says Scott Mitchell, president and CEO of OCEG. The merger will "further OCEG's broader charter to help organizations align those activities to drive business performance and promote integrity," Mitchell reports.

"There is a lot of good work to be done providing guidelines and instruction on how to best apply technology to improve governance, risk and compliance management," adds Sebastian Holst, president of the Compliance Consortium.

Many CFOs will welcome help in those areas, particularly in applying technology to compliance activities. Tech investments will account for approximately one-third of companies' overall compliance expenditures this year, according to data from AMR Research. Businesses will spend more than $5.2 billion on technologies to support their compliance activities out of a total compliance spend of close to $15.5 billion.

New Round of BPM Buyouts

In July, business intelligence application provider Business Objects announced that it will acquire SRC Software, a privately-held business performance management (BPM) vendor, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $100 million. The companies expect to close the deal before the end of September.

With more than a 17 percent share of the business intelligence software market, Business Objects is the dominant player in that space, according to data from IDC Research. The acquisition positions the company to meet the needs of the increasing number of businesses that want to purchase their BPM system from their business intelligence vendor.

The announcement follows hot on the heels of the Cartesis Group's purchase of Inea Corp., a Toronto-based provider of enterprise planning, forecasting and reporting tools for the financial services sector. Inea has more than 7,000 customers in 44 countries. Cartesis, an established BPM player based in Paris, sees the acquisition as key to its long-term goal of delivering functionality that encompasses what it calls "the three pillars of BPM": financial consolidations, planning and forecasting, and information delivery.

Cartesis is shelling out to boost the analytic capabilities of its product line, too. In July the company announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Advance Info Systems Inc., a provider of online analytical processing (OLAP) software for interactive reporting and analysis.

Group To Battle Data Theft

IBM, together with several dozen other organizations, including American Express, Merrill Lynch and the World Bank, has formed the Data Governance Council to help companies manage access to their critical information, measure operational risk associated with that access, and defend their data against hacker attacks and other security breaches.

"Increasingly, companies are seeing alarming rates of data theft," says Robert Garigue, chief information security officer with the Bank of Montreal, a council member. "We need a better approach to overseeing appropriate access to critical information at all levels to help minimize this threat."

The council's efforts will also help companies mitigate the risks that arise when they exchange data. "One of the biggest problems for organizations is how to manage and control all the data that resides within a company these days, especially as more and more companies do business with each other online, extending into large data supply chains," notes Steven Adler, chair of the council and program director with IBM Data Governance Solutions. "There is a clear need for common solutions and governance models to protect and share data on different levels."