Washingtonian Names Approva CEO John Becker ‘Top 100 Tech Titan’
Detect, Eliminate, & Prevent SoD Conflicts
Technical Solutions Architect
Access Certification: An Intersection of Compliance and Risk Management
ACIIA Conference 2009
Senior Network Engineer
Achieve 100% Auditing of P-Card Spend Without Adding Staff
It Pays to Be a Control Freak
Stop Accounting Mistakes and Strengthen Financial Controls
Travel & Entertainment Insight
- Product Overview
- Key Benefits
What is Travel & Entertainment Insight?
Approva's T&E Insight automatically monitors travel & entertainment expenses by consolidating all of the relevant information into one place and identifying exceptions to corporate policies. Continuous monitoring and analysis ensures expenses are valid and automatically detects fraud, waste or compliance risk. Automated reconciliation and workflow capabilities ensure timely exception management.
Travel & Entertainment Insight Software Capabilities
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Integrate, Correlate and Enrich T&E Expense Data
Add valuable information to T&E expense data, such as level 2/3 details, split transactions into multiple accounts, or attach external documents such as scanned invoices.
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Sophisticated Spend Analytics
A best practice library of business rules searches for anomalies using algorithms, patterns and trending to provide a 360 degree view of your T&E expenses. Detect unusual spending by employee, department, or expense category.
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Automatic Closed Loop Reconciliation
Perform automated transaction reconciliation that allow for manual reconciliation based on business rules. Adjustment entries integrate directly with the general ledger to close the reconciliation loop.
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Software-as-a-Service Model
Accelerate deployment with a software-as-a-service deployment approach that requires little to no support from internal IT staff and quick deployment.
Lower T&E Expense Auditing Costs
Eliminate spot checking by quickly deploying best practice controls that analyze 100% of transactions for exceptions to corporate policies and business rules.
Reduce Administration Costs
Reduce the administrative time accounts payable managers and internal audit employees spend researching, analyzing, tracking and manually resolving card and travel expense exceptions with employees.
Reduce Non-Preferred Vendor Spend
Automatically identify rogue purchases with non-preferred vendors which do not take advantage of available discounts.
T&E Spend Visibility
View all T&E expense data in one place so you can identify spend patterns, opportunities for vendor discounts and repeated T&E policy exceptions.
Additional Product Resources
Master Data
Approva’s Approach
Approva automates monitoring of vendor, material and customer master data across your IT systems so you have confidence that all of your processed invoices, payments, sales orders and goods receipts are legitimate. Approva can also take a snapshot of your master data and then identify unauthorized changes from that baseline.
Approva monitors field-level details for duplicate and missing data, inappropriate use of fields (e.g. “alternate payee”) and configurable settings (e.g. automated enforcement of 3-way match).
Key Benefits
Reduced Expenses
Approva reduces procurement expenses by ensuring that underlying data is accurate. This reduces unauthorized and duplicate payments and ensures that vendor discounts are utilized appropriately.
Improved Financial Reporting Accuracy
Approva eliminates errors at the source so that small mistakes do not compound over time and trigger manually intensive reviews during the financial close process.
Reduced Audit Preparation Time
Approva enables you to baseline your vendor, material and customer master data. Out-of-the box reports enable you to easily demonstrate to auditors that the master data which drives your procurement and accounts receivable process has not been compromised or changed inappropriately.
Additional Product Resources
Errors in the data that underlies procurement transactions results in unnecessarily excessive procurement costs.
Accounts Receivable
Approva’s Approach
Approva automates controls testing and monitoring for your accounts receivable processes. Continuous monitoring and analysis ensures orders are accurate and automatically identifies exceptions to corporate policies including inappropriate changes to configuration settings and vendor master data. The net result is increased confidence that all of your shipments and customer payments are accurate so you can maximized revenue and reduce order processing transaction costs.
Key Benefits
Suspicious Shipments
Immediately identify suspicious orders. Approva can automatically identify credit extended to customers without proper approvals, shipments to blacklisted customers and late payments which violate contract terms.
Reduced Excessive Discounts
Identify orders with excessive discounts including orders lacking proper approval, discounts offered to customers with poor payment history and orders with improper payment terms.
Reduced Transaction Costs for Orders
Automated monitoring catches mistakes when they occur. Fixing problems up front is much less time consuming and costly than tracking down errors long after the fact. In addition, time consuming manual audits can be virtually eliminated as auditors rely on Approva's continuous monitoring capabilities.
Additional Product Resources
Approva gives me a higher comfort level that all of the data that’s in the financials is supposed to be there and that it’s correct, accurate and complete.
-Manager of Financial Systems & Reporting, Siemens
Jeff Skelly, Vice President, Sales
P-Card Insight
- Product Overview
- Key Benefits
What is P-Card Insight?
P-card Insight automatically monitors purchasing card transactions by integrating disparate data, identifying exceptions and ensuring each exception is resolved in a timely and compliant manner. The automated reconciliation and workflow process ensures expenses are valid and automatically identifies exceptions to internal policies and external regulations that result in fraud, waste or compliance risk.
P-Card Insight Software Capabilities
Sophisticated Spend Analytics
A best practice library of business rules searches for anomalies using algorithms, patterns and trending to provide a 360 degree view of your p-card process. Detect unusual trends within p-card spend by employee, department, expense category or across the organization.
Dashboards & Reporting
Executive dashboards provide high level key performance indicators (KPIs) and alerts of noncompliant exceptions while a comprehensive report library offers additional insight via summary and detail views into p-card spend.
Workflow & Escalation
Workflow automates resolution of exceptions by routing and escalating issues for follow-up to ensure timely resolution and streamlined p-card audits.
Software-as-a-Service Model
Accelerate deployment with a software-as-a-service deployment approach that requires little to no support from internal IT staff and quick deployment.
Eliminate Financial Misuse & Fraud
Eliminate the time your IT security staff spends running manual reports. Automated SoD control monitoring identifies violations when they occur and alerts appropriate managers.
Increase Earned Rebates
Grow your rebates program by increasing transaction and dollar limits and adding new MCCs and card users with the assurance that 100% of p-card transactions are being monitored.
Reduce Non-Preferred Vendor Spend
Automatically identify rogue purchases with non-preferred vendors which do not take advantage of available discounts.
Reduce P-Card Monitoring Costs
Automate monitoring to eliminate costly and time consuming manual audits and ensure 100% of transactions are reviewed.
Additional Product Resources
Accounts Payable
Approva’s Approach
Approva automates controls testing and monitoring for your accounts payable processes. Continuous monitoring and analysis ensures purchasing-related transactions are accurate and automatically identifies exceptions to corporate policies including inappropriate changes to configuration settings and vendor master data. The net result is increased confidence that all of your processed invoices, payments and goods receipts are accurate and legitimate.
Key Benefits
Reduced Loss from Inappropriate Payments
Immediately identify waste and loss from duplicate, suspicious and fraudulent payments. Approva can also automatically identify rogue purchases with non-preferred vendors which do not take advantage of available discounts.
Reduced Overpayments
Identify overpayments which do not take advantage of negotiated vendor discounts. Approva’s solution also helps you negotiate more favorable supplier discounts by gaining visibility into your true spending volumes.
Reduced Transaction Costs for Purchases
Automated monitoring catches mistakes when they occur. Fixing problems up front is much less time consuming and costly than tracking down errors long after the fact. In addition, time consuming manual audits can be virtually eliminated as auditors rely on Approva’s continuous monitoring capabilities.
Additional Product Resources
World class organizations spend 33% more on compliance than their peers. They also spend proportionally less on transactional processes than comparable companies.
Source: Hackett Group
IT & ERP Security
Approva Solutions for IT & ERP Security
Approva’s products are the recognized industry standard for managing segregation of duties risk and automating the way you monitor application controls.
IT Security groups that are looking to eliminate segregation of duties (SoD) violations, reduce user provisioning costs, cut audit preparation time and reduce the cost and disruption of quarterly access certification turn to Approva to automate compliance obligations and strengthen application security controls.
With Approva IT organizations can automate the process of analyzing and monitoring SoD and sensitive access exceptions, remediate exceptions, establish automated compensating controls and analyze ongoing user access changes to prevent new risks. Companies that use Approva typically reduce audit preparation costs for access management by more than 80%.
Approva was the only vendor to receive the highest possible rating – strong positive – in Gartner’s “MarketScope for Segregation of Duty Controls Within ERP and Financial Applications.”
Audit & Risk Management
Approva Solutions for Audit & Risk Management
Approva is used by all of the "big four" audit firms and is the industry standard solution for monitoring controls and managing exceptions across business systems, processes and transactions.
Audit groups that are looking to reduce the cost of audits and improve audit accuracy and quality turn to Approva to help them automate manual control testing, streamline audit preparation and proactively monitor key risks.
With Approva, Audit and Risk Management organizations can implement continuous monitoring programs that proactively monitor key risks. As new risks emerge, auditors can create new rules that automatically identify when issues arise.
More than 25% of fraud instances involved losses of at least $1 million.
US organizations lose an estimated 7% of their annual revenue to fraud.
Source:
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
Travel and Entertainment Expense Datasheet
P-Card Programs
Approva’s Approach
Approva consolidates all p-card related data and enriches it with related information. Continuous monitoring and analysis ensures expenses are valid and automatically identifies exceptions to internal policies and external regulations that result in fraud, waste or compliance risk. Automated reconciliation and workflow capabilities simplify exception management and ensure issues are addressed in a timely and appropriate manner.
Key Benefits
Reduced Waste & Fraud
Immediately identify waste and fraud such as duplicate payments, late fees, split transactions and other misuse. Approva can also automatically identify rogue purchases with non-preferred vendors which do not take advantage of available discounts.
Increased Rebates & Discounts
Grow your rebates program by increasing dollar limits, transaction limits, and adding new MCCs and card users with the assurance that 100% of p-card transactions are being monitored. Approva's solution also helps you negotiate more favorable supplier
discounts by gaining visibility into your true spending volumes.
Reduced Monitoring & Admin Costs
Automated monitoring eliminates costly and time consuming manual audits and ensures 100% of transactions are reviewed. P-card holders also spend less time on administrative tasks since many processes, such as reconciliation, are automated.
Additional Product Resources
Approva enables you to confidently grow your purchasing card program and prevent losses due to fraud and waste by continuously monitoring p-card transactions to identify and address suspicious purchases.
Finance
Approva Solutions for Finance Organizations
Approva provides automated financial controls that deliver accurate, actionable and auditable intelligence of anomalies across your financial transactions, processes and systems so you can identify exceptions that impact financial results.
Finance organizations that have embarked on finance transformation or financial governance projects turn to Approva to help them achieve world-class levels productivity levels by proactively identifying and addressing exceptions so they can reduce financial reporting errors, lower audit and compliance costs and improve financial reporting accuracy.
How do you compare?World-class companies have a 93% lower exception rate within their financial reporting process than the average finance organization.
Source: The Hackett Group
Optimize Your P-Card Program With Deeper Visibility than Your Bank Provides
Application Security & Configuration
Whether you are simply looking to clean up your segregation of duties violations and get ready for your IT audit or want to implement controls monitoring more broadly across you IT applications Approva can help.
Our track record speaks for itself.
We have helped our customers drive measurable business value by automating the way they identify and manage access rights across business applications, implementing compliant provisioning processes and baseline and monitor configuration settings.
Authorizations Insight
Monitor user authorizations across your ERP and legacy systems to detect, remediate and prevent segregation of duties (SoD) conflicts and inappropriate access to sensitive transactions.
Read more
Certification Manager
Make periodic user access certifications a straightforward exercise by automating the end-to-end process for reviewing use access rights across all sensitive applications.
Read more
Access Manager
Quickly implement a compliant user provisioning process to keep your applications free from controls violations.
Read more
Configuration Manager
Baseline and monitor system and process configurations across all of your critical business systems to prevent unauthorized or unexpected changes.
Read more
Role Manager
Continuously tune ERP roles to ensure that your security model is optimized to balance business needs against regulatory operational risks.
Read more
Approva receives a "Strong Positive" - the highest possible rating - in Gartner's MarketScope for Segregation of Duty Controls Within EP and Financial Applications.
Source: Gartner
Stop Duplicate Payments and Optimize Working Capital
Approva Releases BizRights 4.5 to Prevent Fraud, Eliminate Waste and Reduce Risk
Stop Accounting Mistakes & Strengthen Financial Controls
The Forrester Wave™: Identity And Access Management, Q1 2008
Q&A on Financial Governance Market Trends
Sarbanes-Oxley Update: How to Best Support the CFO
Hype Cycle for Governance, Risk and Compliance Technologies, 2008
Hype Cycle for Identity and Access Management Technologies, 2008
Magic Quadrant for User Provisioning
MarketScope for Segregation of Duty Controls Within ERP and Financial Applications
Manage SoD in ERP and Financial Systems to Address Audit Findings and Conflicts of Interest
The Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) Landscape, Part 2
Hype Cycle for Data and Application Security, 2008
Financial Governance Will Emerge to Enhance Financial Controls and Regulatory Reporting
Leveraging Financial Analytics
Continuous Controls Monitoring for Transactions: The Next Frontier for GRC Automation
The GRC Technology Puzzle: Getting All The Pieces To Fit
Approva Wins 2009 SmartCEO/BDO Seidman Future 50 Award
2009 SmartCEO/BDO Seidman Future 50 Award
Deloitte Technology Fast 500, 2008
Approva Receives Strong Ranking in Research Firms Report on GRC Landscape
Approva Announces New Products to Eliminate Fraud, Misuse and Waste for Purchasing Cards (P-Cards)
Controls Monitoring in the Public Sector
Approva’s Approach
The Approva Controls Intelligence Suite helps agencies achieve compliance and prevent fraud by providing a single, independent platform to automate key business controls. The platform integrates with all major business systems commonly used in agencies including PeopleSoft, SAP, Oracle, CGI AMS/Advantage and a variety of other systems (i.e. Tax and Revenue, Medicaid, Child Support, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and others. Approva’s out-of-the-box controls are based on industry best practices for segregation of duties, transaction monitoring, master data and IT system configuration.
Key Benefits
Holistic Visibility to Key Systems and Transactions
Approva products run on a single platform, enabling agencies to
take a holistic approach to internal controls. Agencies can create, manage and monitor all internal controls through one application. This provides better visibility to key business processes like user access, grants management, purchase card transactions and travel & entertainment expenses and mitigates the potential for fraud or financial misstatements.
Reduce the Risk of a Data Breach by Safeguarding Sensitive Information
Knowing where sensitive fields are exposed across your systems or databases enables you to be proactive and reduce the risk of a costly breach in your organization. Approva enables agencies to maintain the integrity and security of IT systems and processes by continuously monitoring sensitive information, transactions and user access violations. With Approva’s out-of-the-box controls, agencies can ensure the security of sensitive public data (i.e. social security numbers, vendor or employee bank account numbers, credit card numbers, or compensation).
One Platform to Manage Key Controls Across the Organization
The Approva Controls Intelligence Suite enables agencies to automate their key financial and IT controls, helping them to prevent fraud, improve efficiency and reduce the cost of compliance. Approva’ products ship with a comprehensive library of best-practice controls which have been validated by the “Big 4”
audit firms. Approva’s rules are simple to configure by end users and provide a comprehensive selection of analytical and reporting tools. These controls address the three main types of internal controls which are critical for agencies: operations and financial reporting; access to applications; and configuration of
IT systems and processes. These controls cover areas such as transaction monitoring, fraud detection, segregation of duties and IT change management.
Approva’s Controls Intelligence Suite helps agencies achieve compliance with legislation such as A-133 Single Audit, the Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 112, and others, by enabling them to reduce risk and manage internal controls more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Steve Elliot
John Becker
Approva Ranks #24 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 List
Deloitte Technology Fast 500
Red Herring Announces Approva as 2008 North America Top 100 Winner
Star Excellence Award for Emerging Business Support
Top 40 Under 40: Approva Customer Jason Lish, Computerworld
Sustaining Your Compliance Initiatives
Managing and Monitoring Master Data Controls
Preventing Application Security Control Conflict
Designing SAP User Roles
AMR Research Alert Article - GRC Landscape, Part 2
Approva Appoints Industry Veteran as CEO
People on the Move
APPOINTMENTS
New CEO at Approva Corporation
P-Card Datasheet
FCPA Solutions Datasheet
Approva Awarded Fall 2008 SSPA STAR Awards for Service Excellence
Compliance Week GRC Announcements: Approva Releases Certification Manager
Continuous Audit and IT Audit Automation
Approva’s Approach
Approva’s Controls Intelligence Suite provides a continuous auditing solution that automates tasks that many audit teams are performing manually today. Through automation, Approva improves the frequency with which tests are performed and expands the breadth of data tested. Approva automates the testing of system configurations, user access, master data, and transactions across business systems, freeing auditors to spend time investigating true exceptions, not just gathering data.
Key Benefits
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Reduced Audit Cost
Save up to 75% of audit testing time over critical systems and business processes. Eliminates the need to re-perform most point in time audit tests because continuous monitoring is in place. Save valuable time for busy auditors and reduce travel requirements in some cases, improving retention and job quality.
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Improved Audit Quality
Move from sample-based testing to monitoring full populations of data and identifying all exceptions. Ensure consistency of testing processes and enable auditors to focus time and attention on most important business areas. Approva enables real time disclosure in the reporting cycle.
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Improved Operational Effectiveness
Detect potential business risks or problems early and notify managers so appropriate action can be taken immediately to eliminate the risk or stop the problem. Improve cash flow by identifying best practices and non-compliance with corporate policy (such as payment terms) resulting in optimized business processes.
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Reduced Fraud Risk
Prevent occupational fraud including collusive fraud by creating a perception of monitoring. The Association of Certifried Fraud Examiners (ACFE) estimates that fraud costs 5% of annual revenue, on average. Eliminating just 10% of this cash leak can result in significant savings.
Additional Product Resources
Approva Appoints Industry Veteran as CEO
John Becker
John Becker
Approva Receives “Strong Positive” Rating in Leading Analyst Firm’s Report
Gartner: MarketScope for SoD Controls Within ERP and Financial Applications
MarketScope for Segregation of Duty Controls Within ERP and Financial Applications
Try These Innovative Marketing Techniques
Approva Announces Release of Certification Manager
Approva Ranked 2nd Fastest Growing Company in Virginia
Certification Manager
Approva Rolls Out New Risk Oversight Options
The Controls Challenge
Approva CEO to Share Controls Intelligence Success Stories at Audit World 2008
Approva Expands Global Presence in Partnership with BDO Malaysia
Ernst & Young Signs Multi-Year Licensing Agreement with Approva Again
Ernst & Young Offers Risk Control Analytics
Ernst & Young Signs Multi-Year Licensing Agreement
Honeywell Podcast
AMR Research Alert Article - What Happens to SOX?
Approva CEO Invited to Speak at IIA International Conference
Red Herring Announces Approva as 2008 North America Top 100 Winner
Site Map
Experts offer tips on IT business controls
SSPA Honors Approva with Star Award for Best Practices in Customer Support
Approva CEO Selected to Present at MAVA’s Capital Connections 2008
Red Herring Announces Approva as North America Top 100 Winner
Approva CEO Named E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year® 2008 Award Finalist
Approva Announces Release of BizRights 4.1
SSPA Honors STAR Awards Best Practices Winners
General Ledger
Approva’s Approach
Approva's Controls Intelligence Suite provides continuous controls monitoring over the general ledger, journal entries, and financial transactions. Approva automates financial controls, strengthening their effectiveness and reducing the time spent managing and testing manual controls. It proactively flags unusual journal entries (such as debits to credit accounts or large manual postings), inappropriate changes to the chart of accounts, and high risk configurations that can directly affect financial statements. By notifying the right managers throughout the quarter, managers have time to act and there are no surprises at the end of the quarter.
Key Benefits
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Reduced risk in shorter financial close cycles
Reduce the risk of financial misstatement or significant deficiency with Continuous Controls Monitoring. Managers can focus time and attention on true exceptions, not just proving that transactions are legitimate. Even more importantly, mistakes or anomalies are discovered early with proactive notifications throughout the quarter, not at the time of the financial close.
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Stronger, more effective controls without additional resources
With comprehensive monitoring, not just sampling, Approva provides stronger controls that reduce risk and mistakes without adding time to the financial close. Controls Intelligence enables you to automatically monitor for key risks without an army of people manual investigating financial anomalies. Enable manager to spend time working on high value strategic projects, instead of tracking down detailed to explain unusual financial transactions.
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No surprises
Controls Intelligence provides an audit trail that improves visibility into financial controls and provides evidence that is easily accessible to managers and auditors. And with comprehensive automated controls and proactive notifications, you can avoid surprises during the financial close cycle or at the time of an audit. With continuous controls monitoring, management can sign off on the state of financial controls and the financial statements with more confidence.
Additional Product Resources
“Approva gives me a higher comfort level that all of the data that’s in the financials is supposed to be there and that it’s correct, accurate and complete.”
– Manager of Financial Systems & Reporting, Siemens
Cash Management and Treasury Controls
Approva’s Approach
Approva’s Controls Intelligence Suite automates controls over cash flows. With continuous controls monitoring over cash collections and disbursements, organizations can reduce risk and improve visibility into cash management, helping optimize liquidity. Automated controls identify risks and weaknesses in the payment or collection cycle and proactive alerts allow managers to take action without delay.
Key Benefits
Improve control and management visibility across cash and bank processes
With automated controls and continuous monitoring, managers have a comprehensive and timely view into cash inflows and outflows. With proactive alerts, managers are notified of any early risk indicators in time to take appropriate action. Controls Intelligence provides greater visibility and better control over cash management, without slowing down business processes
Reduce risk of mistakes and fraud across cash management processes
Automated controls and continuous monitoring strengthen the effectiveness of controls over cash management processes. This improved Controls Intelligence reduces your organization’s exposure to fraud and mistakes.
Improve efficiency of cash management processes
Continuous controls monitoring over cash collections and disbursements can identify inconsistencies in processes across teams and can help ensure corporate policies are consistently followed. Best practices can be identified quickly and implemented broadly resulting in improved efficiency of cash management processes.
Additional Product Resources
ERP Deployment and Upgrades
Approva’s Approach
Approva’s Controls Intelligence Suite builds automated controls into your ERP design and implementation. So whether you are upgrading your environment or preparing to go live with a new implementation, Approva builds automated controls for access, configurations, and operations into your system. This way, you can meet your go-live deadlines without significant risk exposure and avoid costly and time consuming redesign of processes and controls later on. Approva can even help you speed your go-live by strengthening controls, improving risk visibility in your current environments, and easing the transition to a new system.
Key Benefits
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A More Streamlined Implementation Process
Complete your ERP implementation or upgrade on time in one smooth process, without immediate rework on process and security design, and retraining users. By building automated controls in to the system design, avoid delays in rollout and provide strong risk management capabilities from day 1.
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Less Costly, More Effective Controls
By designing automated controls into the system and processes, eliminate time consuming and costly manual controls. Save time not just for managers who own the controls, but for internal audit, risk management, and compliance teams who are testing controls and external audit teams as well. In addition, automated controls can be continuously monitored and are often more effective.
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Reduced risk of mistakes, fraud, audit findings, and non-compliance
With automated controls built into the system from the start, you will have strong and timely visibility into business risks. With Approva, material mistakes are flagged immediately so the right manager can take action, fraud risk is significantly lower, and it is easier to ensure that divisions around the world are complying with corporate policy. Controls are continuously monitored so you have no surprises, even in a new system environment.
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More Efficient Operational Processes
Continuous controls monitoring from Approva provides visibility into inconsistencies in business process execution. There is so much change associated with a new ERP deployment, often it’s difficult to know whether processes are being consistently followed in all business units. Approva enables organizations to identify inconsistencies, standardize processes more quickly, and implement best practices globally.
Additional Product Resources
“Ensuring controls is a top priority for our SAP rollout,” said Mark Weber, director of internal audit at Wabash National. “With Approva’s solution, our goal is to strengthen our overall controls environment and reduce the time spent on monitoring and testing our ERP controls. (from August 7, 2006 press release)
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