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The new service is an extension of Answerthink's existing Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Service offering, which helps companies meet the internal control requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley and concurrently improve business performance through the use of proven best practices from The Hackett Group, a business advisory firm and an Answerthink company.

"Now that companies are crossing the finish line with their year one Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts, they're looking for ways to do things more efficiently in year two and beyond. Controls automation is one area where companies can clearly focus and benefit," said Answerthink Managing Director Grant Fitzwilliam. "Many companies' 2004 remediation efforts resulted in adding manual controls; combine this with the fact that most companies use a small percentage of their ERP functionality and you have a meaningful opportunity for improvement."

"We've created a comprehensive controls library, and mapped these to capabilities within the leading ERP systems," said Fitzwilliam. "The result is an assessment service that, in just a few weeks, identifies areas where companies are missing opportunities to automate financial controls using their existing ERP systems. The assessment findings we offer can help most companies significantly reduce their overall Sarbanes-Oxley compliance costs."

Answerthink has created an extensive catalogue of financial controls, and designed an automated system that analyzes how these controls are being implemented in Oracle or PeopleSoft environments. Through a combination of automated tools and consulting services, Answerthink compares ERP setups and configurations to its controls library, then identifies and recommends solutions to address gaps. Answerthink is currently expanding this service offering to encompass other leading ERP software packages, including SAP and Lawson.