SeaSupplier Helps Customers Meet The Sarbanes-Oxley Challenge

August 16th, 2005-Sarbanes-Oxley legislation has created an entirely new generation of urgent requirements for owners and suppliers in the marine industry. With an organization’s cost of compliance often reaching millions of dollars, SeaSupplier, the marine e-procurement unit of Stolt-Nielsen S.A., has stepped in to help meet the challenge.

“Compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements has become a high priority for all of our customers,” said Terry Kearney, Managing Director of SeaSupplier. “I’m pleased to say that we’ve been able to provide quality solutions that help customers address these requirements.”

For SeaSupplier, the first indication that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act would have a significant impact on the marine industry came last year. Several customers requested that regularly scheduled and ad hoc audit reports be built into the SeaSupplier’s system. SeaSupplier’s technical team worked with those customers to generate a suite of reports that met their needs.

That initial flow of requests, however, soon turned into a flood. 

“As an ASP, multiple companies utilize our system and we immediately recognized the need for a standardized approach to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance,” said Ron Mattssen, SeaSupplier’s Director of Technology. “We have now implemented what we believe is the Best-in-Class method for addressing the challenge.”

SeaSupplier’s SeaManager I, the industry’s leading procurement system, provides Sarbanes-Oxley compliance through business rules and auditing functions. The system is designed to be configurable and therefore meet the specific requirements of any company. SeaSupplier staff have become familiar with Sarbanes-Oxley rules through their participation in customer project teams. In most cases, the SeaSupplier team is able to leverage its experience and recommend a streamlined solution based on experience gained on previous projects. 

One of the unexpected benefits of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is an improvement to a company’s cost control processes. Proactive companies have matured from analyzing data for compliance reasons to conducting sophisticated analyses in support of their business requirements.