The Next Leap in Productivity: What Top Managers Really Need to Know about Information Technology

1.16. Last but Certainly Not Least: Sarbanes-Oxley

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) requires all publicly traded companies in the United States to provide extensive financial information to regulatory agencies. Many executives think that complying with this law is an expensive nuisance that provides no real benefit to anyone. There is no doubt that it puts a great demand on the IT function.

Therefore, if for no other reason than to comply with this law and the vast changes it is enforcing in financial reporting, you should want your IT staff to be a highly productive, "peak performing" group.

Goodness knows that your job as CEO is complicated enough without having to worry about breaking the law because your IT group could not provide the right data in the right format in a timely manner.

But, as you will see by the end of this book, SOX—when you look at it as I do, from the point of view of IT and business process—is not an inconvenience. Rather, it is a blessing in disguise because it forces you to do what you need to do anyway to align your business and IT processes.

In the last chapter, I will talk about how to use SOX as a forcing function to drive the vitally important improvements in IT productivity and quality that are this book's focal points. But before we can come back to this somewhat contrarian assertion, we need to look at the whole spectrum of ways in which IT needs to change. So let's get started....