Top Choice: Paisley Is Hot Pick For Compliance Software

Many public companies are holding off on major technology decisions that will help them comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's section 404. Instead, they're relying on spreadsheets and word-processing programs to document their internal financial-reporting controls as they search for more comprehensive compliance solutions. But of the companies that have purchased compliance software, most have chosen Risk Navigator from Paisley Consulting, according to an Ernst & Young survey earlier this year.

The 10-year-old family-owned provider of audit software has emerged as a hot-growth company, counting 30 of the Fortune 100 companies among its customers. Paisley last month secured $10 million in equity financing--its first outside investment--and earned a place on Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing private U.S. companies for two years running. Paisley plans to use the $10 million to accelerate Sarbanes-Oxley product development and expand its presence in the United States and abroad.

Paisley has experienced 900% growth in the last five years, driven in large part by wide-scale adoption of its Risk Navigator product, which lets companies document and test internal financial-reporting controls. The latest version includes a dashboard that lets execs drill down into problem areas. Paisley CEO Tim Welu views as his primary competitors IBM and Microsoft, dismissing smaller providers of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance software as "point solutions." Welu acknowledges the need for a holistic approach to compliance, with links to the enterprise systems that produce the data that feeds financial-reporting systems.

Regions Financial Corp., a bank with $49 billion in assets, has documented and tested half of its key financial-reporting controls using Risk Navigator and is on target to meet all of Sarbanes-Oxley's certification requirements by early next year, says Loring Muir, the bank's director of compliance. Muir says Risk Navigator enables Regions to identify risk, create action plans to mitigate that risk, and control the effectiveness of its financial-statement accounts and processes.

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