OracleAppsBlog
A day in the life of an Oracle Applications Consultant

Internal Controls Manager (AMW)

Friday, February 10, 2006

Oracle Announces New Releases of Internal Controls Manager and Financial Consolidation Hub

I’ve been interested in Internal Controls Manager ever since the first release and like what Oracle is doing with it. Apparently they now have about 250 customers using ICM.

Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub version 2 is available now whilst Oracle Internal Controls Manager version 5 is scheduled to be generally available in 2006.

According to the Press Statement:

The new versions will help to ensure the quality and transparency of financial information across the enterprise by integrating the preparation of financial statements with the periodic evaluation of a company’s internal controls.

Finance teams have traditionally managed consolidation and reporting separately from compliance certification efforts. This meant that finance teams had to report financial results without complete knowledge of the risks, mitigations, and audit tests that lay behind each financial statement line item, or finance teams had to track these relationships manually. In the latest release, Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub introduces full integration with Oracle Internal Controls Manager to converge financial reporting and compliance certification processes. Oracle’s corporate performance and compliance management applications are built on a single analytic platform, which provides the framework necessary for consistent processes and certification across disparate source systems. The single data model delivers greater visibility and helps increase confidence in financial results by presenting consolidated global financial results with related risks and mitigations.

Posted by Richard Byrom on 02/10 at 07:23 PM
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Monday, September 20, 2004

Oracle OpenWorld DEMOgrounds visit – Internal Controls Manager

On Tuesday 7th September 2004 I paid a visit to DemoGrounds at Oracle OpenWorld and took a look at Oracle Internal Controls Manager, here’s a summary of my findings.

I have to say I quite like this product as well as the idea and concept behind it. Internal Controls Manager (ICM) has been developed so that it can assist organisations that are trying to ensure they comply with the new requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 as well as increased adoption of International Accounting Standards (IAS). Internal Controls Manager comes standard with 11i10 but not 11i9 (you have to patch up a standard 11.5.9 install to get ICM working).

According to the demonstrator there are only about 160 people implementing it and most of those customers are in the USA. The various brochures, fact sheets and documentation I was given to read indicated that Oracle was one of the first ERP Vendors to come out with a product like this. A product flash leaflet I was given at the DEMOgrounds entitled An Ounce of Prevention - Oracle Internal Controls Manager by Scott Tiazkun of IDC had the following to say: -

The product of work with customers and design partners PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte and Touche to give it that user-tested and partner-approved feel, the Oracle application is aimed specifically at facilitating compliance with Sections 302 and 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. Section 302 requires particular employees to state that their internal controls are effective. Section 404 requires them to attest that a company attains standards similar to those set by The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), a Congressional commission subcommittee on internal controls. This is in addition to the external auditors certification and review of the same issues.

Oracle ICM is used in conjunction with Oracle Workflow, a modelling tool already in the E-Business Suite that allows users to design internal business processes and store them in a repository. Oracle ICM monitors these processes to ensure they are performed as designed. If deviations occur, automatic alerts are sent to designated personnel. Oracle ICM allows users to catalog and track risk factors that might impact financial statements and includes Oracle Tutor to document policies and procedures. The product also uses iSurvey as a mechanism to conduct questionairre-based assessments and also to support anonymous feedback to provide "whistleblower" support. The application provides users with an auditing portal-type work screen, where users can submit audit findings and issue audit reports, manage process documentation, document business process variations, and review compliance status of financial statements, reconciliation status and overall enterprise compliance status.

The Oracle Internal Controls Manager Home Page

The Oracle Internal Controls Manager Home Page

In a nutshell the Controls Manager allows you to take a look at the processes within your organisation, determine the risks at each point within a process and specify controls which should mitigate the risks. Oracle has integrated ICM very well into the E-Business Suite and this is the beauty of the product. Firstly ICM links with Oracle Projects so that if you are going to conduct an audit you can treat it as a project which is appropriately costed and allocated the right resources. Secondly it integrates with Tutor in a manner that allows you to import your Oracle Tutor process documentation into the module. Lastly, where you don’t have any process documentation prepared in Tutor, an interface is available with Web ADI that provides you with templates where you can capture process, risk and control information for subsequent import into ICM.

I’m hoping to have a chance to implement this product in the future and would certainly be interested in receiving contributions from readers or implementor’s relating to this module.

Posted by Richard Byrom on 09/20 at 05:25 PM
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Friday, July 02, 2004

Better Corporate Governance with Oracle Internal Controls Manager

This post discusses the Oracle Internal Controls Manager, a new product by Oracle that is intended to help organisations meet the requirements of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 and International Accounting Standards (IAS).

Product Features and Capabilities

Oracle Internal Controls Manager is a comprehensive tool for executives, controllers, internal audit departments, and public accounting firms to use to document and test internal controls and monitor ongoing compliance.

The benefits of utilising the Oracle Internal Controls Manager are listed as 3 fold: -

  1. More efficient internal control testing
    • Audit Program office/project management
    • Risk assessment questionnaires
    • Confidential feedback mechanism
    • Reviewing reconciliation status of all subsystems
    • Reviewing policy compliance
  2. Higher Certainty in your Risk Assessment
    • Internal audit system is part of your operational system – this ensures accurate, real time business information.
    • Risk library and associated controls developed by Oracle working with world leaders in Audit and Risk Assurance.
  3. Lower external audit verification costs

    4. Internal control manager ensures internal & external auditors understand your business systems risks and associated controls, hence reducing time taken to understand the system and saving you money.

Installation

At this point in time the Internal Controls Manager does not even come with release 11.5.9 of Oracle E-Business Suite. After first hearing and reading about this product I e-mailed Nigel King, Senior Development Director at Oracle Corporation to find out how I could install it. He informed me that ICM is currently on control hold so that they can understand where it is being sold. I subsequently discovered that there are two minipacks available on Metalink, but you will need to have a password to access them. Because I work for an Oracle Partner I raised a TAR and explained that I would like to download the patches so that we could test this product as there were some interested clients - after doing this Oracle gave me the passwords. The patches no.‘s for product code AMW (the Oracle Internal Controls Manager Product Code) are as follows: -

  • Minipack A - 2972149
  • Minipack B - 3232451

I tried installing Mini Pack A on an 11.5.9 instance, however, the list of pre-requisites was so long and these pre-requisites also have pre-requisites! Eventually I got bored and started working on the many other things I have on my list of things to do. I’m sure I will continue this activity at some stage so I can at least be able to write a realistic assessment of the products capabilities. In the mean time I’m hoping this information will be useful to someone and would be interested to here from other parties who have actually used the product.

Additional Information

The Oracle Corporate Governance Page has a variety of presentations, white papers and videos that you can take a look at. It also mentions the high level Oracle Corporate Governance solution "slogan". According to the page "Only Oracle offers complete, integrated business intelligence and analytics that provide your management team with continuous, current, customized information about every aspect of your business-from finance and human resources to supply chain and marketing. Find out how Oracle can help you improve your business operations in the areas critical to good Corporate Governance: 

  • Visibility - Access timely, relevant, accurate information across your organization 
  • Control - Centralize and secure policies, processes, and procedures 
  • Efficiency - Roll up and reconcile data quickly and accurately while eliminating administrative overhead".

Presentations and White Papers

Posted by Richard Byrom on 07/02 at 01:30 AM
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