Hasbro sorts its SOX with content management software

Toy manufacturer Hasbro has extended the use of its content technology to help it also ensure Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance.

The $3bn company - which manufactures 'leisure time entertainment products' such as the board games Monopoly and Risk - first implemented the LiveLink package from OpenText in its engineering department.

It later extended its use to help groups who might be in different countries collaborate on new products, explained Michael Elliott, Hasbro's European IT director.

He said: "Two years ago SOX arrived. We are a US stock exchange-listed company so that hit us right between the eyes."

"It wasn't optional for us or for any [other listed] US corporations. It was just a case of all hands to the pumps to respond."

Part of SOX compliance involves documenting and testing processes and being able to show that they are being adhered to. Hasbro decided to use the LiveLink content management system for this too.

Elliott said: "We could have done that on Excel spreadsheets or Word documents but we [wanted] a common place to put all this stuff and that's LiveLink because we have that investment there."

Next Hasbro is looking to streamline its systems further to reduce some of the "onerous" demands of SOX compliance.

Elliott is also looking at automating some of the processes involved: "We have a retention policy that depends on lots of individuals following the policy - we'd like to get to a point where we can automate that. Part of that is email and we have a lot of content stuck in emails and we want to get a handle on that as part of the retention policy."

The company is also looking to extend the use of the LiveLink system further to hold digital assets such as photos and artwork. "That's the direction we've seen we want to go in," Elliott added.