Essence Networks

We offer expertise in Corporate Governance & Compliance, Risk Management, Business Architecture, Programme Management, Enterprise Architecture, Mentoring, and workshops.

We can help your organisation achieve:

• A more robust Corporate Governance System
• Better Ranking and ethical profile for your organisation
• Cost Effectiveness from your expenditure in Corporate Governance, products and services as a whole
• A more agile working culture that learns and adapts to the governance needs of today.

Our expertise in this area are:

• In-depth knowledge of financial disclosure standards, policies and guidelines
• Working knowledge of Corporate Governance Best Practices – what works in the field
• Working knowledge of professional  Risk Management and Compliance Management

Why Us?

Our  proven approach helps achieve the results you require.

Products

We deliver:

• Governance Manuals – assessment, design and documentation
• Committees / Boards – assessment, design and documentation to gain mandate and commitment
• Control Processes, Policies and Procedures – assessment, design, documentation and IT-enablement, where applicable.
• Financial Reports as per US GAAP IFRS – utilising XBRL where applicable
  • Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 20-F

Value for Money from IT Investment

We work to integrate the IT Governance functions within the overall Corporate Governance regime.

Recent years have seen a large number of significant business operations and internal controls implemented within IT systems.  We help to integrate the organisation internally and develop capability for IT to perform, manage risk and improve compliance for the organisation.

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We work to develop an integrated risk management capability within our client organisations.

Expertise

We have expertise in:

• COSO ERM. AS/NZ 4360:2004 and the emerging ISO 31000 Standards

• Risk Modeling and IT Automation Tools for Enterprise Risk Management

Products

We deliver:

• Risk Advisory Committee – design and establishment papers
• Corporate Risk Management Framework – design and documentation for mandate and commitment
• Risk & Control Assessment Reports
• Controls  Design – documentation, process maps and test structure
• IT Requirements Definition – Business Analysis and specifications for your IT teams
• IT Solutions Design – assessment, design and documentation
• Fully documented and populated corporate-level risk models

Our Business Architecture offering addresses issues that we have encountered while working for large and complex organisations :

• The need for efficient, coherent specifications for areas that impact the organisation as a whole (Strategy Execution, Compliance)
• The need for a  more dependable way of converting creative ideas into practical procedures, and protocols, for collaboration.
• Duplication of work and bureaucracy that does not add value to outcomes.
• Need for improved collaboration between departments and support organisations.

Expertise

We are growing expertise in this area using a proven approach, and through our experience in:

• Working with leading organisations across Industry areas (Finance, Public Sector & HiTech)
• Programme Management, Business Analysis (Enterprise-Level) , Audit and Enterprise Architecture

Products

We produce:

• Documentation – Position Papers that address Strategy & Vision objectives for use as collateral for your initiative.
• Business Cases  – Cost Benefit Analysis for Business Case justifications for use as collateral for your initiative and for reference.
• Business Design Blueprints – detailed specifications that serve as a reference for business operations and Programme/Project execution and external review.
• IT Requirements Definitions – functional requirements, business rule definitions, information and data maps required for IT Projects, external review.
• Requirements Traceability Reports – For stakeholders and project teams who need to trace business requirements to specific decisions within projects, their products and features.
• Fully populated qualitative and quantitative model repositories for in-house use.

Our work serves to complement Business Analysis and Programme/Project documentation already in place.

Our services help achieve:

• Higher effectiveness and strategic relevance of your in-house Enterprise Architecture programme
• An established, formal, professional Enterprise Architecture programme
• Improved value for money from your outsourcing vendors
• More coverage across IT projects and business operations
• Trained IT  Solution Architects able to make better use of expenditure in new paradigms (like SOA/BPMS)  and  IT Platforms:

Expertise

We use the Zachman Framework(TM) as the core discipline.  We also have working knowledge of descriptive frameworks such as TOGAF or FEAF that can be employed according to client preference.

Our multi-disciplinary approach has been developed from working across business and in-house IT teams and formal Programme/Change Management.

We have practical knowledge of IT industry standards and recommendations from open standards bodies such as W3C, The Open Group, OASIS, OMG, and WfMC.

Products

We deliver:

• Assessment Reports of your current in-house Architecture Practice – Vision & Strategic Positioning, Maturity and Capability with vendor-independent Value for Money advice.
• Enterprise Architecture Framework – custom design based on industry standards and in-house capability
• Architecture work products for Programme Management, IT Project Management and Business Analysis activities, such as:
  • Role and Responsibility Matrices
  • Architecture work flow specifications
  • Business, Information and Technology Standards Library – customized to your organisation
  • IT Solution Architecture Documentation based on popular IT platforms
• Architecture & Design Committee – design and establishment
• Workshop design – design & training material
• Architecture models – Process, Data, Role/Security, Network and Performance
• IT Service and Infrastructure models and specifications
• Architecture model repositories based on industry leading toolkits such as  IBM Telelogic, MEGA, Sparx Enterprise Architect or Proforma ProVision
• Custom  model repositories as per requirements.

Compliance Managers today are looking to consolidate their spending.  Both Public Sector and Corporate executives are looking for more value from spending in compliance.  Public and consumer awareness has grown significantly, resulting in increased expectations.

In our experience, even firms who take their compliance obligations seriously, by going beyond a tick-box approach and investing in their internal culture, face some difficult challenges.  Here are a few:

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Organisations often treat compliance costs as sunk costs.  Our work has shown that careful planning and a multi-disciplinary,  design-led approach can achieve significant strategic benefits.  Here is our paper, originally published by the NZ Society for Risk Management and is available for download.

Please Login/Register to download. Do not hesitate to contact us directly with your questions, comments or suggestions.

Unlocking Real Business Benefits from your Legislative Compliance processes