southwest airlines uses automation to accelerate and ensure sox compliance

Using Automation to Accelerate and Ensure SOX Compliance

Southwest AirlinesERP Center of ExcellenceFebruary 2015

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Founded 1971–Headquarters: Dallas, Texas

– 46,000 Employees

Ranked America’s #1 Best Run Company for 2014– 2014 Revenue: $18.4 billion

– 1-year share price change: 118.8%

Nation's largest carrier for originating domestic

passengers– 100 million customers annually

– 3,600 flights a day

International service launched June 2014–Bahamas, Jamaica, Aruba

–Mexico in 2015!

About Southwest Airlines

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SAP Footprint

FICO

–Accounts Payable

–Accounts Receivable

–Fixed Assets

–General Ledger &

Consolidation

–Projects

–Purchasing

–Treasury & Cash

Management

–Currency Exchange

HCM

–Payroll

–Benefits

–Personnel Administration

–Employee Self-Service

Portal

–Manager Self-Service Portal

SIRAX

–Custom passenger revenue

management system

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Monthly Transports

–Initiated by business

–Enhancements, corrections

Semi-annual Service Packs

–Initiated by SAP

–Annual updates for taxes, etc.

Enhancement Packs

–As needed

–EnhP4 and 6 since inception

Special Projects

–Foreign currency

Change Cycle

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SAP implemented in 2010

–Wyatt ERP project

Center of Excellence established

–Embedded in business, not technology

–Team of expert business analysts

–Configure and test business processes

–Responsible for user support, training

Worksoft Certify® implemented in 2011

–Training delivered to CoE

–Initial processes developed

–Automated Service and Enhancement Packs

Background

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Benefits and Challenges

Benefits: Successfully

automated end-to-end

business processes

–Converted two week test

into 30 minutes

–Automated interface

verification

–Captured extensive library

of transactions

Challenges: CoE team

members not dedicated

to automation

–Competing duties for

configuration, manual

testing, training and

support

–Too much elapsed time

between testing cycles

–Need for skills refresh due

to lack of continuity of effort

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Sarbanes-Oxley requires audit of internal

controls

–Time-consuming, manual task

SAP has 45 automated controls

–50 different documents require review

40+ hour manual process every quarter

–Navigate to hundreds of screens

–Capture related documents

–Paste into Word document

–Circulate for review, approval

Opportunity

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SIRAX has many revenue controls

–Each control includes one or more scenarios

–Each scenario has 20+ different screens

Two week manual process every month

–Navigate to hundreds of screens

–Capture related documents and postings

–Paste into Excel document

–Verify against checklist

–Verify all posting entries

Opportunity (cont’d)

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Commit dedicated resources to automation

–Two (2) full-time on Worksoft Certify

–Automation skills, experience

–Collaborate with CoE to prioritize and automate

Target high risk/return areas

–HCM portals

–Expanded end to end

–Expanded interfaces

–SAP SOX

–SIRAX SOX

Approach

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Processes must run in production

–High security

–Initial resistance to automated access

Collaborated with audit and governance team

–Defined process to request special credentials

–Issued for automated execution only

–Released at end of execution

Negotiated acceptance of automated results

–PDF format seen as secure

–Automation viewed as objective

Special Considerations for SAP SOX

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SOX results captured in Excel–Screen shots

–G/L Account postings

–Sequence varies by ticket type

–Used by Finance to verify revenue accounting

Environment comparison captured in text–Critical ticket data captured from screen

–Process executed in two environments – one before, one after change

–Results compared using File Compare

–Used to detect differences introduced by upgrades, transports

Special Considerations for SIRAX

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Weekly regression against QA environment

–Executes overnight

–Scheduled in Task Manager

Automated result notification

–Email sent to CoE distribution group

–Subject has pass or fail status by area

–Link to PDF results

Benefit: Greater confidence that compliance

processes are functioning as needed at all

times

“Lights-Out” Execution

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Increased velocity, coverage with automation

–Across end-to-end business processes, HCM portals,

Interfaces, SAP/SOX automation, SIRAX automation

–Test effort reduced from weeks or days to hours

Repeatable weekly regression cycle

–Greater efficiency: 100s+ hours of manual testing

eliminated

–Higher quality: Exposed defects from monthly transports

Special projects

–Clean-up of environments for BW

–Testing multi-user changes

Results

Questions & Answers

southwest airlines uses automation to accelerate and ensure sox compliance

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