I’m glad to announce that Q4 has been selected by the Branham Group and Backbone magazine as one of the Branham300 Top 25 Up and Comers. The list is composed of companies established within the past three years, no earlier than Jan. 1, 2004. These companies are not ranked; rather, they are showcased alphabetically as firms that show tremendous promise within Canada’s ICT industry.

You can download the full list here: http://www.backbonemag.com/files/PDF/Top_300_2008/top25-up_and_comers.pdf

Recently Sentry Select went live on the new Fund edition version of Q4 Web. 

Q4 Fund Edition supports unlimited product management including: mutual funds, capital units, preferred securities, income trusts, limited partnerships, deposit notes and more. Each of these products has unlimited configurations including: management, performance, distributions, portfolio holdings, prospectuses, press releases, historical NAVs, historical closing prices, regulatory reporting, distribution history, tax information and more.

Sentry Select, a Canadian wealth management company that manages over $8 billion in gross assets, is the first company to adopt the Q4 Fund Edition as its corporate standard for managing its web site. “With the new regulation surrounding secondary market disclosure (Bill 198), we felt it was important to secure and track our corporate web site and its content. “said Brian McOstrich, Vice-President, Marketing at Sentry Select. “We consider the web site as the main communication vehicle with the public and as such, it has the potential to be at the centre of interest regarding disclosure or potential misrepresentation. Having the ability to track the workflow process on our web site, and provide detailed reports on this from any point in time, significantly reduces any potential liability claims of misrepresentation.”

“We’re thrilled to be launching this product to the investment fund industry. Since late 2005 we have been providing issuers with a set of disclosure management solutions that aide in reducing compliance risk and increasing efficiency,” said Darrell Heaps, President and CEO of Q4 Web Systems. “In today’s environment, investment fund companies share the same risk and liability as issuers, but typically deal with numerous traded entities and sources of disclosure.“

More about Q4 Fund Edition can be found here.

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4 WEB, Q4, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites, Disclosure, Compliance, Mutual Funds, Bill 198, MI 52-109, C-SOX

Last week BFI Income Fund (TSX: BFC.UN) went live on Q4 WEB. We’re thrilled to add BFI to our growing list of clients looking to increase the efficiency of managing their corporate web site disclosure.

“We are very excited to be using Q4’s content and disclosure management system to easily manage and control changes to our corporate website,” stated Chaya Cooperberg, Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for BFI Canada Income Fund.  “In today’s regulatory environment, it is very advantageous and reassuring that the system automatically tracks and logs all changes and approvals, ensuring greater protection and compliance. We were extremely impressed with Q4’s ability to smoothly implement their solution in conjunction with our site re-design, and we are pleased to be at the forefront of using this technology.”  

BFI’s web site can be found at: http://www.bfi.ca/

Full Press Release

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites, Disclosure, Compliance

Earlier this week we announced the closing of latest round of funding. Here’s the full press release:

Financing to fund ongoing development of innovative workflow compliance and disclosure solutions and expanded sales and marketing efforts

Q4 Web Systems Inc. (“Q4 Web Systems” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has closed $1.8M CDN in private placement financing from investors including a Schedule A Canadian bank.  The proceeds of the financing will be used by the Company to expand sales and marketing activities and accelerate the development of Q4 Web System’s innovative suite of workflow and collaboration solutions for managing capital markets disclosure and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
“We’ve grown rapidly over the past year and are pleased with our investors’ confidence in our company, our products and our plans for expansion across North America,” says Darrell Heaps, President and CEO of Q4 Web Systems.  “Increased regulation has strained the resources of issuers who are challenged to balance Sarbanes-Oxley compliance with corporate disclosure and the expectations of real-time transparency “  said Mr. Heaps.  “Our suite of innovative solutions addresses the management, tracking and distribution of disclosure and automates many tasks, saving time and money while speeding the delivery of material information to the market. “

Q4 Web Systems’ products aid in the certification of disclosure controls and procedures as specified in Sarbanes-Oxley Act section 302 and Canadian Securities Administrators’ Multilateral Instrument 52-109 and streamline compliance with CEO/CFO certification and Bill 198.  They do so by automatically routing information upward and generating time-stamped, auditable records of all viewers, versions, comments, edits and approvals.

About Q4 Web Systems
Q4 Web Systems is a leading provider of end-to-end disclosure management software. help publicly-traded companies increase efficiency, reduce compliance risk and gain complete in-house control over their disclosure. Q4’s innovative solutions automate many of the manual tasks related to disclosure, saving issuers time and money while speeding the delivery of their material information to the market. Companies across North America rely on Q4Web Systems to manage their disclosure more efficiently, more effectively and with less risk.

For further information: please visit http://www.q4websystems.com/ or contact: Darrell Heaps, President and CEO, Q4 Web Systems Inc., darrellh@q4websystems.com, Tel: 1-877-426-7829, or (416) 626-7829 ext. 222

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4, Venture Capital, Disclosure, Investor Relations, financing, software

June was a busy for us at Q4: starting with NIRI national convention in the first week in June followed by CIRI in mid June and finally the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals conference held in Colorado Springs during the last week in the month.

All three conferences were a great opportunity to meet new people and learn about how companies operate and how our software can help them. As we enter into mid-summer we’re following up with all of these new contacts and are excited about bringing new companies onto the platform. 

We will be visiting Calgary, Phoenix, Boston and New York over the coming months to meet with new companies and demonstrate how our software can help them in many different ways. If you’d like to be included in any of these events (or have one arranged for your company) please contact us and we’ll happily arrange it.

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, NIRI, CIRI, ASCS, Disclosure, Compliance, Q4, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites

This year’s Canadian Investor Relations Institutues conference was held in Whistler, BC. Although the weather was a little wet for the first couple of days it was a beautiful location to hold the conference.  Sunday was the golf tournament and it was foggy and raining, but still a good time.  My team finished with a 73 (or +1) which wasn’t too bad.

View from the golf cart, very cool GPS unit

I spent most of my time meeting with customers and partners and didn’t get a chance to attend very many session ( I attended one that was a panel discussion called The Future of Stock Exchanges and I had to leave early to meet with one of our partners).

The conference was a great opportunity for us to meet with many of our current customers and also to spend some face time with many of the companies we are speaking with about our solutions. Overall the response to both Q4 WEB and Q4 PRESS was tremendous with many delegates speaking very highly of the value that our products provide.

Catherine Crofton and Karen Adams manning the booth.

It was also great to meet with current and new customers about the future of our software and how it can help improve how things work at their companies.  We continue to spend a great deal of time learning from our customers on how to make things better and the conference format is great for this type of dialogue.

Finally we’re thrilled at the response our customers are having to Q4 PRESS and I’m happy to say that we have a significant number of companies that will be joining us in the beta of the product (which will be open from now through to the fall. If you’re interested in being part of the beta please contact us through the Q4 web site or email me directly at darrellh@q4websystems.com

Screen shot of Q4 PRESS - book a demo and win.

We have one more conference to go, next week we’ll be attending The American Corporate Secretary and Governance Professionals conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4, CIRI, CIRI Annual Conference, Disclosure, Investor Relations, Compliance, SOX 302, Sarbanes-Oxley 302, Certifcation

We got back from the National Investor Relations Institutes (NIRI) conference yesterday.  It was held at The Grand Lakes hotel in Orlando, Florida this year.  The resort was beautiful and the entire event was really well organized. Overall the response from all of the delegates was very positive.  We had the opportunity to meet with many companies and partners and are looking forward to working with all of them in the near future.

The Q4 Team at NIRI - pictured above Karen Adams,
Catherince Crofton, Chris Vickerson and Darrell Heaps

In addition to meeting with clients and partners we were also able to attend a couple of the sessions. I heard great review about the session called  The Emerging Virtual Economy by Edie Weiner Futurist. After this session I heard lots of comments and thoughts spurred by Edie. I was hoping that it would be available as a web cast, although I haven’t been able to find it. If you happen to know where I could find it please leave a comment on this post.

In addition a couple of us also attended the XBRL session. Some very interesting thoughts here in terms of how XBRL is evolving and what that means to IROs and their companies. Too much detail to go into it during this post so I’ll just leave you this photo.

NIRI Conference 2007 - XBRL Session

For some more commentary on the event check out the NIRI Conference Feedback page on the Q4 web site.

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, CEO/CFO Certification, Disclosure management, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites, Corporate Content Management, Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance, Q4, NIRI, NIRI Conference

As part of our renewed focus on disclosure management software we launched a new version of the Q4 site. Feel free to drop by and let us know what you think. Go to: www.q4websystems.com

Over the coming weeks we’ll be adding a bunch of product videos and other details. Be sure to check us our frequently or subscribe to this blog’s feed to keep up-to-date on all things Q4.

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, CEO/CFO Certification, Disclosure management, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites, Corporate Content Management, Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance, Q4

I just came across a great article on computer world titled Sarbanes-Oxley compliance costs drop, better processes credited . Here’s a slightly paraphrased version:

Couple of studies have come out stating Sarbanes-Oxley costs are going down. The latest, according to a survey by Financial Executives International. The Florham Park, N.J.-based organization found the average company spent $2.9 million on SOX compliance in 2006, versus $3.8 million in 2005 and $4.5 million in 2004. - 23% reduction. The prime driver for this reduction is based on companies automating their controls

“Technology has a lot to do with the cost reduction,” said Sanjay Anand, chairperson of the Sarbanes-Oxley Institute. Public companies “are actually automating their controls. A good 20 to 30%, even as much 40%, of the cost reduction is actually coming from automated controls rather than manual controls.”

But this isn’t the only benefit…

Anand also said: “SOX compliance forced many companies to really understand and document their business processes. As you gain more visibility into processes you can actually streamline them, compress them, make them more efficient,” Anand said. “Once you start to make business processes more efficient from a controls standpoint, you eliminate errors and fraud. You’re automatically making businesses run better.”

Automating disclosure of controls a big part of how Q4’s software helps improve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. We’re big believers in using software to help increase internal efficiency and reduce risk and it’s great to see the additional benefits being created – namely reduced cost and improved performance.

Technorati Tags: Sarbanes-Oxley, SOX, SOX 404, SOX 302, Sarbanes-Oxley 302, Disclosure, Disclosure Controls, Compliance, Risk

Yesterday the CSA formally launched their XBRL voluntary filing program that was announced back in January. Here’s the press release from OSC’s web site.  

Toronto - The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) announced today the launch of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) voluntary filing program. The voluntary program will help the Canadian marketplace gain practical knowledge and experience preparing and using financial statements in XBRL format.

XBRL is an emerging business reporting language designed to make it easier for investors and analysts to quickly access data and analyze information from a greater number of companies. When using XBRL, “tags” are assigned to pieces of data, and these tags provide information about what the data represents. For the voluntary program, the pieces of data are the content of financial statements, such as revenue or net income.

“We believe this technology will be a great step forward in helping investors analyze financial information, ” said Jean St-Gelais, Chair of the CSA and President & Chief Executive Officer of the Autorité des marchés financiers (Québec). “We are confident that the Canadian marketplace will recognize the benefits to investors of filing in XBRL format.”

The CSA will make the XBRL financial statements available to the public through SEDAR.com. The website links to the CSA’s XBRL website, which contains more information about XBRL and the voluntary program. Issuers wishing to participate in the voluntary program should contact one of the CSA staff members listed on this website: www.csa-acvm.ca/html_CSA/xbrl.html.

The CSA, the council of the securities regulators of Canada’s provinces and territories, co-ordinates and harmonizes regulation for the Canadian capital markets.

Technorati Tags: Disclosure, SOX, XBRL, Corporate reporting, Q4 Web Systems, Q4