Approva Announces Record First Quarter Results With Expanded Product Offerings for Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards & SAP
Analyst recognition and reseller agreements validate company’s market leadership for continuous controls monitoring and audit automation software
April 11, 2007 - Reston, VA
Approva® Corporation (http://www.approva.net), the leader in continuous controls monitoring and audit automation software, today announced strong growth for the quarter ending March 31st, 2007. First quarter revenue bookings significantly outpaced results from the same period in 2006 and marked the most successful start to a fiscal year in the company’s history. In addition, Approva significantly expanded the depth and breadth of its product line and received the highest attainable rating in a report by a leading industry analyst firm.
“Our first quarter growth was driven by strong demand among global companies to strengthen their governance risk and compliance programs by automating their approach to controls monitoring,” said Approva CEO Prashanth (PV) Boccasam. “Approva is the only company with a product suite that addresses the full spectrum of controls across all major ERP systems and custom applications for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. As a result, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the spike in demand that is forecast for 2007 as continuous controls monitoring becomes a mainstream application for Fortune 2000 companies.”
In addition to continued revenue growth, Approva achieved several key operational objectives during the first quarter of 2007 including:
- Expanded cross-platform support for Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and SAP: With the release of Approva BizRights version 3.5.2, customers benefit from new products and enhancements to our Oracle, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft offerings. In addition, SAP’s certification of Approva’s BizRights® Continuous Controls Monitoring Platform for use with SAP ECC 6.0 (mySAP ERP 2005) at SAP Labs means Approva’s products are fully compatible with the most recent version of SAP’s core ERP product line. Approva also announced Role Designer, a new product that enables users to perform advanced role modeling for their SAP systems. Role Designer provides advanced role simulation and analysis capabilities that enable SAP security professionals and other system users to design and optimize both new and existing roles. Role Designer enables companies to ensure that their security model is optimized to balance business needs against regulatory and operational risks.
- Receiving a “Strong Positive” rating from Gartner: In its “MarketScope for Segregation of Duties Controls Within ERP, 2007”1 report, Gartner rated Approva a “Strong Positive” – the highest attainable rating. The report assessed multiple vendors’ abilities to address segregation of duties using three different techniques: static analysis, provisioning support and transaction monitoring.2
- Completing a global reseller agreement with Sun Microsystems: A new reseller agreement with Sun Microsystems enables Sun to resell Approva’s entire suite of software to its customers worldwide. In addition, Sun and Approva announced the immediate availability of a new joint solution that integrates Sun Java™ System Identity Manager and Approva BizRights. This new offering allows companies to implement fully automated compliant provisioning systems that connect Approva’s continuous controls monitoring software with Sun’s enterprise-wide identity management solution. The joint solution has already been deployed in a production environment with one of the world’s largest food and beverage manufacturers.
- Continued global expansion: With the appointment of Himanshu Singh as president of Approva’s India Operations, Approva solidified its presence in the Asia Pacific region. In light of India’s highly-skilled workforce and rapid economic growth, the company’s operations there have been instrumental in fueling our expansion and are now poised to make even greater contributions to Approva’s success.
- Successful launch of “I Love a Good Audit” marketing campaign: On Valentine’s Day Approva launched a new and innovative marketing campaign under the “I Love a Good Audit” banner. The campaign is designed to raise the awareness of Approva’s solutions by changing the way people approach their audits. The campaign has been enthusiastically received by the marketplace, driving unprecedented traffic to the Approva web site (http://www.approva.net), and to Approva’s newly launched official blog, Audit Trail (www.approva.net/audittrail).
“While we are proud of our Q1 accomplishments, the ultimate measure of our success is the cumulative benefit our customers realize from our solutions,” said Rick Cobb, Approva’s chief operating officer. “Today, Approva’s customers are using our solutions to deploy some of the largest and most sophisticated continuous controls monitoring and audit programs in the world. In the process they are realizing a return on their GRC investments that exceeds their most optimistic expectations.”
About Approva
Approva® Corporation is the industry-leading provider of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software and is the continuous controls monitoring standard for half of the Big-4 audit firms. We enable business, finance, IT and audit professionals to automate and strengthen business and IT controls across SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and other legacy applications. Global companies such as Bayer, DirecTV, Discovery Communications, First Advantage, Honeywell, P&G, Pratt & Whitney, Siemens and T-Mobile rely on Approva to reduce compliance risk, increase operational efficiency and flag exceptions to their business controls. Approva has certified integrations with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, IBM and SAP to provide a holistic GRC solution. For more information, visit http://www.approva.net.
Editors Note: For additional and more specific background on each of Approva’s initiatives, please go to Approva’s press room at www.approva.net/news.
1. Gartner, Inc. “MarketScope for Segregation of Duties Controls Within ERP, 2007”, by Paul E. Proctor, Jay Heiser, and Neil MacDonald, February 9, 2007.
2. The MarketScope is copyrighted February 2007 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.