Meanwhile, a House committee that oversees the financial-services industry is considering legislative action on accounting rules. Ultimately, its legislation may require companies to make such changes as reporting material events immediately, even if they are mere technicalities, such as certain loan defaults.

Certainly, some large and mid-size companies have sophisticated reporting systems that can already handle faster and more transparent disclosure. Cisco Systems, for example, claims it now consolidates its worldwide quarterly financials in one day, completes a full analysis of its major accounts the next day, and signs off on a final analysis the third day.

But that's the exception. Reason: While many companies have implemented various financial-consolidation, budgeting, reporting, planning, and analysis tools, they often operate in isolation. Upshot: Their companies lack the integrated systems that are necessary to provide a fast, comprehensive, and detailed view of financial performance that new SEC rules or Congressional action may require.

Many companies facing this systems integration problem are still using aging computers. "Companies have a lot of legacy processes, including old client-server versions of consolidation software, and there's typically a lot of manual intervention during the consolidation process," says John Van Decker, the program director of application delivery strategies at the Meta Group. "Problems are exacerbated when companies have disparate ERP systems," he adds.

Further, most companies will have to upgrade internal and external business processes to support new rules. For example, real-time financial reporting is impossible if back-end systems collect data from business partners only on a monthly basis. Upshot: Companies will have time and manpower to improve data coordination with their business partners.

Lee Geishecker, an analyst at Gartner Group, expects to see IT resources strained if the government mandates greater transparency. Reason: Big companies without comprehensive financial and performance-management systems will struggle to meet the new requirements for more timely and better-quality data. This will be especially true in multinational companies that have language and currency-conversion problems.

Meanwhile, many smaller companies haven't had the money to implement sophisticated financial-management tools. And, they fear new requirements may lead to big expenses. Chuck Schwartz, the CFO at Hometown Auto Retailers in Watertown, Conn., a group of auto-sales and -services franchises with $280 million in sales, says that smaller companies may not be able to handle the proposed regulations easily. Reason: They're typically using spreadsheet technology to handle their financials; their budgets may not allow for large software investments; and they have small corporate accounting staffs. "There's only so many hours in a day to get things accomplished, so you'd probably need to hire more people," he says.

While many companies support improved transparency, they also see a conflict between some of these practices -- accelerated accounting cycles, for example -- and accuracy. Case in point: Deluxe Corp., a St. Paul, Minn., check-printing company with $1.28 billion in sales, uses Adaytum Inc. software for internal financial reporting, planning, and forecasting. Then, it pulls data from its SAP financial applications for SEC reporting. Here, Senior VP and CFO Douglas Treff backs SEC proposals to improve the transparency, since it will improve investor confidence. But, he says "there may be conflicts between the stated goals of increased transparency, improved disclosure, and the increased accuracy of all the numbers." Shortening reporting times, he contends, could reduce data accuracy in some businesses.