Gold Lion Associates delivers solutions and services that automate your business processes enabling information sharing between your business partners.  Our goal is to assist you to manage information relevant to your business. This experience in delivering enterprise wide solutions for Information management extends across various industries such as Communications, Pharmaceuticals and Financial Services.

Our focus is on the capture, transformation and delivery of Information in both a centralized or distributed business environment.  We have an in-depth knowledge of information processing including: scanning, indexing, character recognition, forms processing, transactional processing and integration with your legacy systems and information sources.  Through the use of web portal technology, Gold Lion Associates assists you in personalizing and organizing your information allowing you to access your information your way.

SOX Compliance

Meeting compliance regulations has become one of the top priorities for all company executives. In the past, cost reduction and process improvements were the primary focus of most corporate IT projects.  Today, new compliance regulations impose the need to manage and retain information from inception, including all draft iterations, through to the final document "record" stage including associated approvals and details surrounding its context.  A seemingly small mistake can snowball into a huge liability.

It is generally accepted that software for which there is inadequate or inappropriate documentation poses the very real opportunity to impact adversely on the risk profile of the modern enterprise.  Maintaining and developing enterprise applications without maintaining a quality compliant standard of documentation is like developing and maintaining a high-rise building without a blueprint.

The following scenarios are the most probable consequences of inadequate or unavailable documentation:

Reporting Risk (Regulatory, Sarbanes-Oxley (S0X) Compliance) The underpinning tenet of regulatory and compliance reporting is accuracy, along with the associated requirements of relevance and timeliness. Without adequate system documentation, reporting requirement development and maintenance cannot be accurately tested and, therefore, poses a considerable corporate and market risk. In today’s regulatory climate, it is even more important to have well documented systems.  The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, describes criminal and civil penalties for noncompliance, certification of internal auditing, and increased financial disclosure. This just doesn’t apply to public companies. Directors of private companies can be sued for breach of fiduciary duties from shareholders (and in certain cases creditors) just like public company directors.

Section 404 is perhaps the most contested of the Sarbanes Oxley Act sections as companies scramble to meet compliance. All annual financial reports must include an Internal Control Report stating that management is responsible for an "adequate" internal control structure, and an assessment by management of the effectiveness of the control structure. Any shortcomings in these controls must also be reported. In addition, registered external auditors must attest to the accuracy of the company management’s assertion that internal accounting controls are in place, operational and effective.

Gold Lion Associates maintains the proper level of documentation and audit trails in all software projects we manage. We provide documentation and controls on key business processes we are automating. This allows business executives to turn their focus away from the debates of the cost of Sarbanes-Oxley, and achieve greater competitive advantage through tighter process controls and metrics.

These efforts result in higher quality of financial controls and disclosures, and enhance the financial results through superior process automation and controls.