Company News & Press Releases
PRESS RELEASE - Sunera Reaches Five Year Anniversary Milestone
Tampa, FL, March 8, 2010 – Sunera (www.sunera.com), a multinational provider of business and technology risk consulting services, would like to announce the accomplishment of reaching its five year milestone. Over the past five years, Sunera has grown to 12 office locations, including three outside the United States, and delivered nearly 900 projects to clients in the public, private and government sectors.
Sunera was founded early 2005, by two former KPMG risk advisory services partners, Peter Armstrong and Emmett Lange. Believing they could provide a higher quality of service at more competitive rates, began, along with a few employees, working out of shared centers in the Tampa and Miami markets. With the goal of providing risk based consulting services that would allow companies to achieve and sustain cost effective corporate governance, Sunera opened its doors and it wasn’t long before the first project was won. Through the next three years, Sunera experienced rapid expansion on all fronts including: revenues, client base, resources, office locations and service offerings.
”From the outset,” said Emmett Lange, “our plan was to build a national, project-oriented consulting firm with a strong technology focus that would serve as an alternative to traditional CPA and staffing firms. Five years later, we believe we have accomplished this goal as demonstrated by our impressive portfolio of clients, service offerings, and office locations.”
During the most recent years, 2008 and 2009, Sunera has resisted the job cutting and retrenching plagued by its competitors and supplemented its go-to-market strategy with an experienced sales force. As a result, Sunera has achieved year over year growth during the 4th quarter of 2009 and 1st quarter of 2010. Recently, Sunera completed its first acquisition and was notified that it had been selected as “Vendor of the Year” for one of its high profile and long-time clients.
“We believe we are only as good as the quality of our people, and during the past year, we have added some great people to an already outstanding and loyal core team,” said Mr. Armstrong. He added, “Our team is motivated and capable of leading our expansion, organically or through acquisition, and building upon our exceptional client base.”
Sunera’s core service lines include: Internal audit and technology audit co-sourcing; information security and PCI compliance; Sarbanes-Oxley and Model Audit Rule assistance; IFRS transition; and business and technology advisory.
NEWS - Battling the Big Four
Tampa, FL, February 25, 2010 — After more than a decade with one of the Big Four accounting firms, Peter Armstrong is building his own company, Sunera, by focusing on pricing and the things that the Big Four don’t do as well.
Complete article download: Battling the Big Four
Click here to read the article on the Gulf Coast Business Review's website
PRESS RELEASE - Sunera Launches Pre-configured SAP Role Design Toolkit
Tampa, FL, February 23, 2010 – Sunera (www.sunera.com), a multinational provider of business and technology risk consulting, would like to announce that it has developed a unique methodology for implementing SAP security roles which meets the rigorous compliance requirements organizations face today. The methodology was developed using Sunera’s extensive SAP security and role design experience. This role design methodology is designed to significantly reduce the cost of developing and maintaining a compliant SAP role design by shortening the development and implementation cycle. Additionally, it reduces ongoing support efforts related to maintaining security roles and managing user segregation of duties (SoD) issues over the life of the role design. To achieve these efficiencies, Sunera’s SAP role design methodology has a number of implementation accelerators including:
- Pre-configured SoD free roles that generally meet 85% to 95% of an organization’s security requirements,
- A logical naming convention that maps to key elements of GRC rule sets to facilitate efficient user SoD remediation,
- Reporting templates developed for the BizRights and SAP GRC SoD products formatted to assist the business with user SoD remediation,
- Pre-defined test scenarios, and
- Templates to fast track information and requirements gathering.
In addition to the implementation accelerators, Sunera’s SAP role design methodology also includes a project plan that outlines the phases and tasks required to successfully implement a compliant SAP role design and can easily be modified to meet customer specific needs.
“Organizations have realized significant savings using Sunera’s segregated role design and implementation methodologies for both new SAP implementations and SoD remediation initiatives,” said Charles Braswell, the Director of Sunera’s SAP Security Practice.
Sunera’s SAP Security Practice specializes in designing SAP security permissions, integrating security role within the SAP environment, and assisting organizations with remediating segregation of duty violations. To inquire about Sunera’s segregated SAP role design or any of its SAP services, Mr. Braswell can be contacted by phone at (813) 731-9665 or by email at cbraswell@sunera.com.
NEWS - Sunera & UGA's Terry College of Business Launch ERM Roundtable
Atlanta, GA, February 19, 2010 - The Enterprise Risk Management Roundtable was created by Sunera in partnership with The University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. The goal of the Roundtable is to promote thought leadership around enterprise risk management (ERM) while facilitating networking opportunities for attendees.
More information about upcoming and past events can be seen one Sunera's dedicated web page: ERM Roundtable
An ERM Roundtable Linkedin group has also been established.
Past News & Releases
NEWS - With local foothold, Sunera expands nationally
Tampa, FL, December 4, 2009 — Eight KPMG associates formed Sunera LLC five years ago to offer risk-based consulting services with lower fees. The firm sells its services by saying they come without the bureaucracy of a large accounting firm.
“We saw Big Four firms charging so much for their services and we knew that in year two of Sarbanes-Oxley, no one wanted to pay the exorbitant rates,” said managing partner Andrew Cannata.
Sunera’s founders came from diverse regions of the country and from Canada, and they had extensive experience in the Tampa Bay area. The founders’ client relationships helped the company prosper, Cannata said.
Sunera serves clients ranging from small nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries including retail, health care and government.
Complete article download: With local foothold, Sunera expands nationally
Click here to read the article on the Tampa Bay Business Journal's website
PRESS RELEASE - Chip Fradet to Lead Sunera’s New Financial Services Industry Practice
Tampa, FL, December 3, 2009 – Sunera (www.sunera.com), a multinational provider of business and technology risk consulting services, would like to announce Victor “Chip” Fradet has joined the firm to lead its new Financial Services Industry Practice. Mr. Fradet has over twenty-four years of diversified banking, information technology, risk management, compliance, operational efficiency and strategic planning work experience, having worked at the executive and management level with consulting firms, public accounting firms, financial service companies and software developers. He is Certified in the Governance of Enterprise Information Technology (CGEIT) and is a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA). Mr. Fradet will be responsible for growing Sunera’s brand and delivering its service lines to the banking and financial services industries.
Before joining Sunera, Mr. Fradet held positions in Enterprise Risk Management and Information Security at one of Florida’s largest community banks. Prior to this, Mr. Fradet was the Director responsible for the fifth-largest US public accounting firm’s Technology Risk Management practice for the Southeastern United States. He is also a former Principal of a nationally recognized boutique consulting firm focused on the banking and financial services industries. Over the course of his consulting and audit career, he has managed and delivered engagements to banks ranging in asset size from de novo to multi-billion dollar institutions. Mr. Fradet also has a solid understanding of banking from hands-on experience earlier in his career as a commercial banker and internal consultant in one of the top-five US banks.
“Chip brings a tremendous amount of banking and financial services industry experience to Sunera, especially in the areas of technology, risk and compliance. We expect him to play a key role in further developing Sunera’s already well known banking and financial services client list,” said Sunera Principal and Founder, Emmett Lange. He went on to say, “this move is another important step Sunera has taken to achieve its goal of becoming a recognized leader in this industry.”
Sunera’s Financial Services Industry Practice utilizes all of Sunera’s core service lines specifically adapted for the banking and financial services industry; including Internal Audit Services, Operational and Technology Assessments, and Regulatory Compliance Reviews. For more information on Sunera and its Financial Services Industry Practice, Chip Fradet can be contacted by phone at (386) 212-0086 or by email at cfradet@sunera.com.
