Approva® Corporation (www.approva.net), the leader in continuous controls monitoring and audit automation software, today announced results for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2007. Over the past two quarters, the company grew revenue 80%, increased market share and signed more than 65 new transactions across every major vertical industry.
"We are pleased with our 2007 accomplishments and are excited about the momentum we have built going into 2008. Our customers and partners have recognized the value of deploying a sustainable solution while reducing both cost and risk of ongoing compliance,” said Approva Chairman and CEO, Prashanth “PV” Boccasam. “As the de facto standard across the major accounting firms, Approva is the only ERP-agnostic company that can enable enterprise-wide controls monitoring deployments across Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP, and virtually any other business application that meets or exceeds their audit requirements.”
Fiscal year 2007 was marked by a record number of multi-million dollar enterprise-wide license agreements from marquee customers in every vertical industry. Our multi-ERP application customers represented a wide variety of industries spanning across the world including First Advantage, AECOM, Australia Post, Komatsu, Comcast and Logitech. These agreements continue a trend of larger initial commitments by new customers as they increasingly choose to forego incremental deployments in favor of enterprise-wide controls monitoring solutions. In addition, during the fourth quarter several customers licensed Approva’s products to replace or supplement existing GRC solutions provided by their ERP vendors, which did not meet their governance, risk & compliance business objectives.
" Approva has grown significantly in the last three years as the preferred automated controls solutions provider for marquee brand names worldwide", said Suzanne King, Partner of NEA and board member. "Approva is in a unique position to capitalize on a high-growth compliance market opportunity with leading-edge products and a revenue-generating partner eco-system that offers compelling business value."
The company’s key accomplishments in fiscal year 2007 include:
Expanded Use by Big-4 Audit Firms: A major audit advisory firm signed a worldwide licensing agreement with Approva becoming the fourth risk advisory firm to standardize on Approva. The firm will use the Approva BizRights™ platform and related applications to support its internal audit, business and technology risk consulting services worldwide. The agreement will enable the risk advisory firm to design and test the entire scope of their clients’ ERP controls. A majority of the “Big-4” accounting firms are now utilizing Approva’s continuous controls monitoring suite of products across their global audit and consulting practices. In addition, more than 1,000 audit professionals across the major accounting firms have achieved Approva Certified Professional (ACP) status and are qualified to deploy and use the Approva software. Approva now has the industry’s largest GRC eco-system of solution providers giving our customers the widest choice and the deepest controls and compliance expertise in the market.
Expansion into Federal Compliance: CGI Federal, one of the largest IT and managed services providers to the U.S. Federal Government signed a marketing agreement to offer an integrated solution that caters specifically to the compliance needs of federal agencies. The combined offering, which includes Approva’s BizRights® Platform and CGI’s Authorizations Insight for Momentum®, enables agencies to develop internal controls that prevent financial misstatements and to provide a continuous controls monitoring framework that satisfies their compliance and fraud-prevention mandates. The CGI-Approva joint solution helps federal agencies take an end-to-end approach to controls monitoring and fulfill the comprehensive Circular A-123 requirements.
Increased Investments in New Products: Several new product introductions reinforced Approva’s reputation for innovation. With the largest deployed customer base of controls automation solutions and more than half of its employees in R&D, Approva is uniquely capable of rapidly translating customers’ requirements into packaged software. This was on display in early 2007 with the launch of new products such as Approva Role Designer, the Approva Authoring Studios and Approva BizRights 3.5, a new release of the flagship suite of products. In addition, the R&D team has recently completed work on a next-generation, high-performance release of its product suite, Approva BizRights 4.0. This breakthrough release, which is scheduled for Q1, 2008 includes significant new capabilities and performance gains that have already received rave reviews from beta customers, including two of the Big-4 Audit firms.
A Year of Industry Awards & Recognition: Approva’s rapid growth and commitment to innovation was recognized with several awards during 2007. Approva was selected as Washington’s Top 100 Best Places to Work. The company’s founder and CEO, Prashanth “PV” Boccasam was selected as one of the finalists for the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, SmartCEO magazine’s Top-50 CEOs to watch for in Washington, DC. Approva’s Global Customer Support and Education group received SSPA’s Star Excellence Award in the emerging business support category for providing excellent technical support while maintaining high customer satisfaction levels compared to industry standards. Other recognition included the American Marketing Association’s “Best Integrated Campaign” award for marketing Northern Virginia Technology Council’s “Hottest Management Team” and “CFO of the Year” finalist and Computerworld’s “Top 40 Under 40” recognition.
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 www.approva.net.