PLANTA pro­ject sup­ports SOX standard

PLANTA pro­ject has hel­ped Starn­berg-based com­pa­ny RENK Magnet-Motor GmbH, a sub­si­dia­ry of the US stock exch­an­ge lis­ted com­pa­ny L3Harris Tech­no­lo­gies, to meet the exten­ded finan­cial dis­clo­sure obli­ga­ti­ons that have appli­ed sin­ce intro­duc­tion of the SOX stan­dard. With PLANTA pro­ject, audit-pro­of recor­ding, track­ing of actu­al hours, and ongo­ing plan­ning of remai­ning effort in a pro­ject beco­me pos­si­ble. Pro­ject mana­gers and exe­cu­ti­ves can see at one glan­ce how well a pro­ject is actual­ly doing in terms of effort and dead­lines and how the data is com­pri­sed – an advan­ta­ge of PLANTA pro­ject prai­sed during the SOX audit of the L‑3 subsidiary.

Not all exis­ting risk manage­ment sys­tems meet the SOX requi­re­ments rela­ting to appro­pria­te inter­nal con­trols. The gap-free docu­men­ta­ti­on of inter­nal con­trols that needs to be pre­sen­ted leads to con­sidera­ble addi­tio­nal effort in the affec­ted com­pa­nies if they are not sup­port­ed by powerful pro­ject manage­ment soft­ware. The use of PLANTA pro­ject, one of the few pro­ject manage­ment sys­tems on the mar­ket for almost 30 years, make it pos­si­ble not only to meet the new requi­re­ments, but also to opti­mi­ze the plan­ning pro­ces­ses in the com­pa­ny – from stra­te­gic plan­ning and con­trol­ling of the port­fo­lio right through to pro­ject management.

While con­ven­tio­nal methods of cost moni­to­ring only compa­re the cos­ts plan­ned up to a par­ti­cu­lar date (plan­ned cos­ts) with the cos­ts actual­ly incur­red up to this date (actu­al cos­ts), PLANTA pro­ject pro­vi­des com­pre­hen­si­ve sup­port for the plan­ning of remai­ning effort. Thanks to the Ear­ned Value ana­ly­sis, it is also pos­si­ble to show the degree of com­ple­ti­on for pro­jects. A trend ana­ly­sis and the ear­ly con­trol­ling of pro­ject pro­gress make it pos­si­ble to initia­te mea­su­res in good time in order to pre­vent bud­get over­runs whe­re possible.

Ear­ned value manage­ment is recom­men­ded as a stan­dard method of pro­ject con­trol­ling. PLANTA pro­ject is one of the few sys­tems on the mar­ket which has ful­ly encom­pas­sed this method sin­ce 1999. The ear­ned value can be cal­cu­la­ted on the basis of com­ple­ted packa­ges of work, the values input for degree of com­ple­ti­on in pro­por­ti­on to the elap­sed time, or accor­ding to free­ly-defi­nable fixed values for work packa­ges which have been star­ted or com­ple­ted. In the wake of balan­ce sheet scan­dals in recent years, the aim of SOX is to bet­ter pro­tect inves­tors by dis­clo­sing pro­ject risks that would distort the com­pa­ny balan­ce sheet if docu­men­ted with gaps. This aim is to be achie­ved by manage­ment respon­si­bi­li­ty through to the repay­ment of per­for­mance-rela­ted pay in the event of incor­rect annu­al state­ments that result in sub­se­quent adjus­tem­ents. Com­pa­nies wary of an initi­al public offe­ring on the US stock mar­ket becau­se of the increased requi­re­ments rela­ting to SOX should not igno­re the oppor­tu­ni­ties that can be gai­ned from a risk ana­ly­sis which can also help to increase competitiveness.