Originally presented at the 2015 Worksoft Customer Conference in Dallas. With over 3,600 flights a day and 100 million annual customers, Southwest Airlines is a complex business. The company uses automation with Worksoft Certify® to ensure that business processes function end-to-end, and has achieved important time and cost savings in accelerating Sarbanes Oxley compliance with automation.

1. Using Automation to
Accelerate and Ensure SOX Compliance
Southwest Airlines
ERP Center of Excellence
February 2015

2. Proprietary
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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

3. Proprietary
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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

4. Proprietary
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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

5. Proprietary
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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

6. Proprietary
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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

7. Proprietary
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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

8. Proprietary
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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)

9. Proprietary
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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

10. Proprietary
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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

11. Proprietary
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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

12. Proprietary
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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

13. Proprietary
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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

14. Questions & Answers