http://www.movaris.com/news/pr/05-01-19.html

U.S. Subsidiary of Japanese Firm Uses Movaris Certainty to Reduce Compliance Time and Costs

Cupertino, Calif.-January 19, 2005-Movaris®, a leading provider of financial control management (FCM) software, today announced that Kubota USA, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Kubota Corporation of Japan [NYSE: KUB], has selected Movaris Certainty to manage its internal financial controls and Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance requirements for Sections 404 and 302. Kubota chose Movaris Certainty for its ease-of-use, advanced email reminders to complete control-related tasks, and ability to track and escalate financial control issues to executives for action.

While the SEC considers extending the Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance deadline for foreign corporations, Kubota intends to deploy advanced financial control management technology to manage compliance now. With several locations in North America, Kubota wanted an application that would reduce the workload of compliance, and make compliance-related information and issues much easier to track. Movaris Certainty delivers easy-to-use email reminders of upcoming compliance tasks for all Kubota's control participants. The system automatically detects non-compliance issues, and again uses email to automatically alert management about the issues, exceptions, and weaknesses in the financial control environment. Certainty's Financial Control Console aggregates information about the status of all control activities, and allows Kubota's executives to pinpoint the status and progress of each outstanding activity.

"We could not manage the documentation and testing of our 500 control objectives with office applications," said Susan Wood, director of internal control with Kubota. "Movaris Certainty's active financial control action plans for evaluations, tests, and self-assessments, centralized repository of evidence, and links to other reference information organize our internal control information-at any given time, we can see the control items that need action. Down the road, we plan to expand our use of Certainty into operational controls as well."

Movaris Certainty manages financial controls for all phases of Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 and Section 302 compliance. Certainty automatically records and maintains a complete body of evidence, including control definitions, reviews, exceptions, weaknesses, and self-assessments, enabling Kubota's management to check compliance status at any time, and improve the financial control system prior to attestation.

"Kubota, one of the first foreign, NYSE-listed companies to adopt technology for Sarbanes-Oxley, will have strong financial control in place long before they have to comply," said Eric Keller, chief executive officer of Movaris. "Smart, foreign-owned companies like Kubota, with 500 controls and thousands of discrete control activities every year, will begin to use an application like Certainty now to automatically track the details about control activities, archive the evidence, identify issues, exceptions and weaknesses, and save time and reduce the overall costs of compliance."

Using Certainty to create a strong financial control environment facilitates improvement in financial operations, and it reduces the time spent on compliance and the out-of-pockets costs of external auditor's fees, management consulting, and staff training.

About Movaris

Movaris is an enterprise software company dedicated to helping organizations achieve complete compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements, and improve their financial control environments, quickly and cost-effectively. Customers range from large firms, such as Proctor & Gamble and Boise Cascade Corporation, to smaller companies such as ESI. Movaris is based in Cupertino, California, with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Pittsburgh. For more information, please visit www.movaris.com or call 888-800-7545.

This article courtesy of sarbanes-oxley-act-compliance.com.
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