Companies are facing a great amount of change in every facet of their operations today. To remain competitive, companies must keep abreast of current developments in several areas.
You recently got together with a group of friends who work for different companies. Your friends share information about their current challenges in adopting new tools or complying with new regulations. Excerpts from the conversation are presented in the following section.
Tell whether each excerpt describes XBRL, ISO 9001:2008, ecommerce, the Sarbanes-
Oxley Act (SOX), or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
a. Suzanne: My Company is working to demonstrate its commitment to continuous quality improvement. We are currently undergoing an extensive audit of our quality management processes. We hope to gain a competitive advantage through this process.
b. Ying: We have just installed a system at our company that integrates all of our company’s data across all systems. We have one central data warehouse that contains information about our suppliers, our customers, our employees, and our financial information. The software retrieves information from this single data warehouse and all systems are integrated. The process of implementing this system has been very expensive and time-consuming, but we are reaping the benefits of being more streamlined, of being able to respond more quickly to changes in the market, and of not having several different software systems operating independently.
c. Steve: I just started a new job in the Auditing Department. My new duties include assisting in the development of testing procedures and methods for determining internal controls effectiveness. I also oversee the testing for assurance of compliance with corporate policies. I am coordinating the review of securities filings for the Yukon Superintendent of Securities with our external auditors. I also am responsible for preparing periodic compliance status reports for management, the audit committee, and the external auditors.
d. Keisha: We have been working on a system to tag all of the financial information in our quarterly and annual reports so that our financial information can be shared easily. We will be able to attach a tag to each piece of financial information. For example, we can tag our “net profits” wherever it appears in the financial reports. Any user accessing the financial reports would then be able to download the numbers for “net profits.” Our shareholders and the analysts will be able to retrieve the information they need quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively.
e. Roland: My company has been shifting much of our purchasing system to the internet. We are able now able to complete many of our business-to-business transactions via the web, which generates little to no paperwork, lessens the chance of error, and decrease the costs of each transaction.