National Restaurant Chain Slices SOX Compliance Time by 89%

Summary

This national restaurant chain took an 89% bite out of their time in complying with Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requirements to document controls over financial reporting. With the help of RegScale’s continuous controls monitoring, automated risk management assessments, and user-friendly dashboards, management was able to replace their cumbersome, paper-based compliance process.

Challenge: Time-consuming, poor visibility SOX compliance

As a public company, this American restaurant chain is required to comply annually with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This includes evaluating the organization’s internal controls over financial reporting, maintaining technology controls for managing identity, safeguarding data, tracking attempted breaches, and evidence logging for audit purposes.

The act also demands the organization’s chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CFO) testify to the accuracy of these reports. They face the penalty of fines and even criminal sentences if the reports are found fraudulent.

The restaurant’s controls documentation and maintenance, evidence collection, and assessments were managed via email, spreadsheets, and other documents. This process required significant manual effort and time to complete. Lacking centralized information and reporting, the organization suffered from redundant workflows and increased timelines.

Completing user access reviews each month for several software tools and systems was a daunting and tedious task, consuming countless hours from system owners, system administrators, control owners, and internal auditors. It allowed for increased exposure to manual error. The process also hampered executives’ complete visibility into the state of controls.

Solution: RegScale’s continuous controls monitoring platform

RegScale came to the rescue with its continuous monitoring (CCM) process. Creating a centralized, integrated data lake, RegScale’s CCM enables faster and easier completion of user access reviews and other risk assessments. Automated, event-driven workflows issue alerts and notifications as necessary. Real-time reporting and dashboards offer unprecedented visibility to executives, ensuring their effective SOX program management.

Result: 89% reduction in SOX compliance efforts and time

Since implementing RegScale, the restaurant’s overall user access review process and data feeds are automated through event-driven workflows and APIs. Dashboards and easy exports provide the team with reports and visibility on progress for each system review and in total.

The organization cut 89% of the time spent by auditors and numerous system and control owners to generate evidence, conduct the user access reviews, assess the controls, and track and report status. Using RegScale has significantly increased the speed and reliability of the user access review process required for annual SOX compliance. The restaurant’s accounting, security, and executive teams are free to focus on other high-value activities. Plus, the risk of non-compliance through manual errors has been greatly reduced.

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