Your company's first rollout of a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance system was more Magic 8-Ball than Six Sigma: "Signs point to Yes" and "Cannot predict now" could almost have been measurable results in that frantic first-year collision of moving-target requirements and impenetrable legalese.

This year, like a lot of large public companies, your $3 billion retail operation needs to "Concentrate and ask again"—in practical terms, streamline your compliance system with a Phase 2 SarbOx project that tightens up business processes, maintains compliance and meets the law's intent head-on. "There's a sense with [Sarbanes-Oxley] that more is better," says John Rostern, director of technology risk management at Milwaukee-based Jefferson Wells International. "But more really isn't better."

To reduce the "more" factor, this project will review your SarbOx system from the top down by identifying high-level controls that must be maintained, eliminating mid-level touchpoints that waste time and money, and automating as much of the process as possible. This review will probably confirm what you suspected all along: that the $3 million you spent on a highly customized system bought complications as often as compliance. "A lot of things were done that, if you'd had a couple more years, you wouldn't have done," says Robert Kugel, an analyst with Ventana Research of San Mateo, Calif.

What you can do now is change that customized system into a vendor-hosted SarbOx Web portal. This Web-based suite of applications will streamline compliance workflow by automating processes such as purchase order approvals and checks on inventory from vendors. Maintaining and verifying compliance data outside your enterprise—in a specialist's secure, SAS 70-certified system—will be icing on the auditors' cake.

And don't skip the ROI this time around. Staying off the front page is no longer the only expected return on a SarbOx investment. Reduced audit costs, reduced staff time, and elimination of revenue leakage from errors such as double-bookings and overpaid commissions can pay down your Phase 2 investment in less than a year.

To see the details behind this project planner and fill in your own estimates, click on the "Get the Tool" icon above and download the interactive worksheet.