As corporate America's compliance-related costs level off, finance professionals focusing on SOX-related work may soon need to switch gears.
According to a study by Financial Executives International, a trade association for executives in corporate financial management, compliance costs in U.S. corporations fell by 13.6 percent from 2004 to 2005. Meanwhile, a Business Roundtable survey found that 52 percent of U.S. companies expect compliance costs to decline again in 2006.
The FEI's report attributed the 2004-2005 drop to "lower staff and consultant time and reduced auditor fees," and pointed to "increased efficiencies" as the reason behind a drop in internal staff hours. According to Scott Walters, a CPA and audit partner with Daszkal Bolton LLP in Boca Raton, Fla., the increasing skill of SOX staffers is another reason. "The learning curve needed to ramp-up, adopt and implement management's assessment of internal controls has past," he says.
So, just what's an experienced SOX staffer to do? Walters believes additional changes to practices and procedures will keep compliance professionals busy: "As businesses mature and develop, new processes and related controls will evolve, requiring documentation for these new processes and controls, and changes to be made to earlier documented control sets."
Andrea Jennings, vice president and general manager of accounting and finance for recruiting firm the Lucas Group, recommends that SOX staffers emphasize their broad array of finance skills if they're seeking a new job. A strong SOX background is actually a solid accounting background, she notes, and that can lead to positions in audit, risk assessment, strategic planning, or a variety of other posts in the finance department. "Many acquired their finance and accounting skills at their SOX job," she observes.
While Jennings says "SOX work drove contract revenue last year" at her firm, a recent rundown of job opportunities there produced only one opportunity for a SOX professional. Luckily, Jennings says, many finance professionals understand the need to adapt, especially as they respond to the ever-changing regulatory environment.
That change may come by way of a recent lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Sarbanes-Oxley and its sweeping oversight of public companies, filed by two Washington-based policy groups, the Free Enterprise Fund and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
