need of 'Information Technology' for financial management?

Answer 1

In the past three years, the role of IT has increased in many areas of compliance, in particular in the following:
● privacy and security—mostly in the protection of computer-based information and networks;
● document retention—dealing with a vast number of documents created and stored digitally;
● financial regulation—involving many IT-laden processes, as SOX Section 404 compliance efforts have made plain.

Information technology (IT) has long played a crucial role in supporting companies’ compliance efforts. The scale and scope of regulations have prompted companies to invest heavily in laboursaving technology in order to keep up with the amount of official paperwork. Post-Enron regulation has placed an even higher premium on IT to find ways to help corporate executives exercise control over their companies and to comply with the new rules. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the US and similar laws elsewhere have led many companies to scramble to overhaul their financial reporting, internal controls and data storage in order to meet unprecedented requirements for speed, consistency and accuracy.
The benefits of IT in compliance include time and labour saved, greater transparency, greater control over processes, and heightened accuracy and reliability of information. All of these benefits can help a company’s reputation, brand equity, investor and shareholder confidence, and customer/partner/supplier relationships.