Case Study: Leading Mineral Company achieves a more efficient SOX process and significant time savings with Workiva

Creating a more efficient SOX process

A mineral company found its SOX process bogged down by redundant work and heavy reliance on the internal audit team: process and control owners weren’t updating documentation directly in the retention tool (AlignAlytics), so auditors repeatedly uploaded the same materials and spent excessive time managing PBC requests and preparing reports. The SEC team’s demo of Wdesk highlighted a more efficient approach and prompted the company to evaluate a change.

The company implemented Wdesk with strong support from Workiva, enabling process and control owners to attach supporting documents, use linked content as a single source of truth, and give external auditors cloud access. Custom dashboards clarified testing status, audit presentations became simpler and more reliable, and internal audit shifted time from repetitive SOX tasks to more on-site and operational audits—moving toward a target of spending 50–60% (versus ~70%) of their time on SOX.