Compliance Know-How Comes Knocking

Could compliance-spending initiatives due to legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley be the next hot spot for VARs? PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) thinks so. According to a recent PwC Management Barometer, more than half (51 percent) of U.S. and European enterprises are expected to increase their compliance spending by an average of 23 percent during the next 12 to 24 months. However, according to the PwC survey, 44 percent of senior execs said their companies lack a clear view of compliance spending, not taking into account such hidden costs as fines, penalties and lost revenue, to name a few. Not being able to efficiently track compliance spending makes a company's ROI even more difficult to prove. So it's no surprise that 90 percent of respondents said their companies plan to improve upon their compliance efforts overall during the next 12 to 24 months. That's where your expertise will come into play.

Looking specifically at companies based in the United States, executives estimate spending an average of 6 percent of their administrative and operations budget for both compliance products and services, according to the PwC report. Sarbanes-Oxley alone accounts for 54 percent of enterprise compliance spending.