When the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was first enacted in 2002 in the wake of several very visible accounting scandals, small to medium enterprises may have felt they dodged a very expensive bullet. The requirement to document processes for governance, risk management and compliance (GRC), and have them confirmed by outside auditors only applied to publicly traded companies. Unlike their publicly traded brethren, SMEs were not forced to purchase costly GRC software, did not have to re-direct resources from their normal daily tasks to prepare for audits, and did not have to change their methods of operation to comply with a government mandate. Yet a funny thing happened in large enterprises as a result of that "bullet." While at first they did it just to check off the "compliance" box on their list of tasks, in time they found that they were operating more efficiently, lowering their costs, driving innovation and becoming much more agile.
Read on.
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