|
 |
Columbia
Natural Resources, LLC Charleston, WV |
 |
| Business
Partners: |
 |
 Project
Duration |
 |
July 2004 - November 2005
| Project |
|
Columbia Natural Resources is a natural gas exploration and
development company acquired from NiSource by Triana to augment
their distribution network with in-house expertise. The board
of directors decided that the best possible returns would be
met by taking CNR public and selling stock. This decision came
at a time when the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002 was reaching
the primary deadline. In order to take CNR public, the company
would have to become 404 compliant. Columbia was already a
model of efficiency and as such did not have adequate personnel
or training to spare for a compliance project.
| Task |
|
This project became immediately taxing when it was discovered that the entire
business infrastructure needed shoring up to even begin to seek compliance landmarks.
All of the applications were created in-house and supported by a lean IT staff
of six. In addition, none of the company documentation was up to date with some
of the policies dating back to the middle 1980s. Datamatics Consultants Inc. set up a system of
rules that would achieve IT compliance without requiring rigid adherence to CobIT.
This included a custom-designed change management process and tighter controls
over financial information. The project was rounded out with a customized disaster
recovery and business continuity plan.
| Method |
|
Datamatics Consultants Inc. provided a specialized IT audit team consisting of two primary auditors,
a Business Continuity specialist and a technical/process writer. The initial
evaluation phase was shared with auditors performing finance-specific examinations
of the business to determine where gaps in processes might need to be addressed.
In many cases those gaps were tied to the application serving that area of the
business. Datamatics Consultants Inc. advised the client of serious issues long before remediation
which enabled the client to make drastically needed changes ahead of the normal
audit cycle. While the client already had a backup plan with off-site storage,
Datamatics Consultants Inc. was able to enhance the program with additional business continuity
steps that ensured a reliable recover as well as maintain backups.
| Results
/ Client Impressions |
|
I am thrilled with the services provided by the Datamatics Consultants Inc. team with their support,
effort, and expertise. Thank you. In fact, in concurrently engaging with three
separate services providers for our current Sarbanes-Oxley compliance initiative,
it seems that the Policies and Procedures portion provided by Datamatics Consultants Inc. was
the one area that was completely in order and functioning well and was our model
for other aspects, so thank you for providing us some success. You guys are certainly
ahead of the pack and we're glad to see such a rapid ROI. |
 |
|
