Tokyo — SAP Japan Co., Ltd. and the Japan SAP User Group have announced that they will establish a new J-SOX (GRC: Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance) Working Group.
The JSUG was founded 10 years ago, in 1996. Its membership has grown steadily, and currently included 323 companies, 27 cross-industry Regional Working Groups, and about 3,000 registered members of JSUGNET on the Web. The JSUG has been active at the global level, through industry-specific working groups, including automotive, pharmaceuticals, foods, trade, and electric power, as well as operation, security, financial, personnel, and area working groups. Through the JSUG, customers and partners of SAP share and discuss information, participating in research, forums, and publication and commendation of papers, in order to suggest new SAP products and services.
Now, in the run-up to J-SOX legislation, which will apply for the first time in fiscal 2008, there is increasing need from user businesses for system support for internal control, compliance, governance, and risk management (GRC). Accordingly, the JSUG and SAP Japan have decided to establish the J-SOX (GRC) Working Group, which will be the JSUG’s 28th working group, in order to further reinforce and develop the JSUG’s original activities of information sharing and training regarding control of IT overall, business process control, and risk management overall. SAP Japan will regularly provide the new Working Group with information on new products and services, training, and upgrade information that can help customers solve problems regarding GRC. In this way, SAP Japan will support research on a diverse range of GRC-related issues from the viewpoints of business and IT.
By establishing the J-SOX (GRC) Working Group, the JSUG has enabled customers’ finance, planning, accounting, personnel, risk management, and auditing divisions to participate, as well as their IT divisions. This is expected to energize the JSUG even further.
The first study meeting of the J-SOX (GRC) Working Group will be held in November. The Working Group will proactively bring together knowledge of the latest SAP products, training, sharing of installation know-how, and requirements for product development and improvement.
