Companies Confident they have the Systems and Processes in Place to meet Governance Requirements

Governance issues are driving changes in systems and processes according to research by CODA Group, the finance systems specialist. 63% of respondents said that they had the mechanisms in place to ensure executive management fulfil their primary responsibility to direct strategy and monitor performance.

The same respondents thought they had the systems in place to provide a realistic, timely, and up-to-date assessment of the company’s position and results as well as ensuring that management controls and reporting procedures are satisfactory and reliable.

David Turner, Group Marketing Manager at CODA, said of the research: “Past research has always shown that companies are behind in implementing systems to help them meet Corporate Governance requirements. Our survey shows a huge shift in this and indicates that priorities are changing and that the emphasis on Governance and compliance has pushed organizations to move IT issues up the agenda.”

A detailed report of the research is available from CODA and shows that improving forecasting and planning systems was seen as less important than adapting finance systems to meet regulatory pressures. These findings reflect the predominantly containment or “risk as a hazard” approach to Governance.

147 international companies in the UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands and the USA were surveyed. The research looked at various aspects of Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility and compliance with accounting standards and proposed legislation. The aim of the survey was to take a sounding of the general nature and direction of Corporate Governance – as well as its implications on corporate accountability – and to establish how worldwide businesses trading internationally are responding to the growing pressures for improved Governance.

Turner continued, “Organizations must now expand the scope of their reporting systems to capture and analyse the key components of intangible assets. For many respondents, cumbersome and inefficient budgeting processes are preventing managers from getting real value from the process. More specifically, businesses are struggling to reduce the length of the planning cycle and move towards a rolling forecast approach.”

ABOUT THE SURVEY
Conducted in the spring of 2004 by PMP and NUI, Galway on behalf of CODA, the Enterprise Governance survey consisted of in-depth interviews with senior finance professionals from 147 international businesses across Europe, and the US. 33% of those interviewed were based in the UK, with a further 32% based in the United States of America. The remainder of the survey participants were drawn from France, Germany and the Netherlands. A small number of the respondents were CODA clients.

Of those organizations that participated in the study, 36% had a US parent and 28% had a UK-based parent.

The interviews were drawn from a wide range of industry sectors with the largest group being manufacturing, at 27%, followed by banking and finance at 14%.

The survey data was complemented by information from a variety of other sources, including case interviews, focus groups, and successful client engagements.