UnumProvident Wins Process Award

Chattanooga, Tenn. - An insurance company was among the four winners of the 2006 Process Innovation Awards. UnumProvident Corp., a Chattanooga, Tenn., disability insurer, received the honor for work in Sarbanes-Oxley solution compliance.

The carrier put together the project with software from Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Stellent Inc., according to Danny Waxenberg, UnumProvident assistant vice president of internal controls.

“This achievement is quite significant,” Waxenberg says, “considering our financial operations are spread across two continents and involve more than 300 people responsible for managing hundreds of financial processes and thousands of key controls."

The effort to streamline compliance won the approval of an independent panel of industry experts, according to the sponsors of the award, two IT consulting companies, Kinetic Information LLC of Waltham, Mass., and IMERGE Consulting Inc., which has offices in Orlean, Va., and Rockford, Ill.

The winners of the award, now in its 10th year, are honored for applications that retur significant business benefit, says Kinetic. The judges look for gains in profits, productivity and the ability to adapt to market conditions.

UnumProvident chose Stellent, a provider of content management, to help with compliance. UnumProvident was the third Stellent customer to win the award, Stellent says.

“After using the Stellent platform for nearly one full fiscal year,” says Waxenberg, “it’s clear it will enable us to more easily and cost-effectively document compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.”

Steve Weissman, Kinetic president, praised the effort. Achieving Sartbanes-Oxley comnpliance continues to present challenges to companies of all sizes and in all of the industries subject to the regulations, notes Weissman, especially with addressing the heavy documentation requirements of Section 404.

UnumProvident benefits from Stellent’s ease-of-use for non-technical employees, the vendor says. At UnumProvident, users include people from accounting, internal auditing and external auditing.

The software’s reporting capabilities also aid UnumProvident, which used to take longer or become too expensive, Stellent says.

UnumProvident will use more the platform’s features this year, including identification and consolidation of processes and controls, which will lead to greater efficiency and better testing, the vendor says.

This year’s other winners of the Process Innovation Awards were Geisinger Health System (TIBCO Software Inc.), Reuters (Globoforce) and TracyLocke (ClearStory Systems).

Sources: Kinetic Information LLC, IMERGE Consulting Inc. and Stellent Inc.

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