Organizations are investing an average of 41% of their SOX internal costs for outsourced resources, compared with 37% last year.

In this podcast, Protiviti Managing Directors Clint McPherson and Seth Schrank discuss opportunities to pursue procedural and structural changes in SOX compliance programs, most notably through the use of third-party delivery centers to handle the highly defined and repeatable controls testing work that dominates SOX compliance efforts.

Protiviti’s annual SOX Compliance Survey benchmarks compliance costs, hours, processes and improvements, including how these areas are affected by current business conditions. This year’s results show that costs, along with the hours that internal audit teams devote to SOX compliance, continue to increase across most, if not all, company sizes, industries and reporting types.

A number of results in this year’s survey showcase the commitment of internal audit and SOX teams to improve the efficacy and efficiency of SOX compliance efforts in the face of cost pressures, intensifying scrutiny from external auditors, labor shortages, remote and hybrid working models, broad and accelerated enterprise projects (e.g., system implementations) that result in changes/increases in scope, and other challenges. Many of these opportunities involve increased use of automation, as they absolutely should. Yet many internal audit teams have yet to explore another valuable opportunity to notch major improvements via a familiar but overlooked mechanism: centers of excellence and related service-delivery models.

For more information, read SOX Compliance Amid Rising Costs, Labor Shortages and Other Post-Pandemic Challenges, available at www.protiviti.com/SOXSurvey.

Contact Clint at clint.mcpherson@protiviti.com.

Contact Seth at seth.schrank@protiviti.com.

For a full transcript of this podcast, contact Kevin Donahue: kevin.donahue@protiviti.com.