Compliance software sales gives IBM leg up

IT services giant IBM India is counting on the growing need of companies to become better adapted to the needs of modern day auditing and compliance after the Satyam Computer Services fiasco. IBM said the Satyam scandal is a fresh new driver for the audit and compliance business.

IBM India has won a series of upgradation deals post-January on the auditing and compliance side of things. It has also won new clients in the manufacturing, BFSI and telecom verticals and a few PSUs have approached it too for contemporary solutions on this front.

V Subramanyam, VP (information manage-ment) IBM Software Group, India-South Asia, said that post-Satyam fraud several companies had approached them to plug loopholes in their accounting methods. He refused to name these customers citing customer confidentiality clauses.

“It’s not that these clients were not serious about their accounting practices, but the degree of scrutiny has gone up,” he said. The Satyam scandal, which broke in January 2009, was an eye-opner for many companies.
Auditing and compliance comprise 15 per cent revenues of the total Information Management portfolio of IBM India. The IM portfolio represents 40 per cent of the Software Group revenues.

“Auditors charge per hour and some companies find that a big financial burden. At IBM, we have the technology to automate audit and compliance electronically,” he said.

IBM also has a solution called ‘Omnifind’ that can sort sensitive and not-so-sensitive e-mails. “Even that has found many takers during this period,” said Subramanyam.

“I’m not sure whether this is a passing phase. But audit and compliance is driving a lot of interest,” he added.

To help clients address their growing compliance, legal and governance challenges, IBM has introduced the new IBM Compliance Warehouse for Legal Control comprising IBM software, hardware and services in a unified environment. This is to enable organisations to achieve, sustain and prove compliance with multiple legal and compliance mandates while reducing cost, complexity and risk. This offering also uses IBM’s Cognos technology for monitoring, reporting and analysing compliance-related content and processes.

“Companies have obviously placed a premium on cost-saving and our endeavour is to help them do that in these tough financial conditions,” Subramanyam said. “The key is to improve the scope of information management strategies, at lower costs.”