Approva Releases BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight; Improves Compliance, Efficiency and Risk Management Through Transaction Monitoring.

VIENNA, Va. -- Approva(R) Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise controls management software, today announced the release of the first of a family of new Process Insights, the BizRights(R) Procure-to-Pay Insight. Approva's Process Insights enable organizations to improve compliance, efficiency and risk management by continuously monitoring day-to-day operations for suspicious, unusual or inefficient activities and transactions. The BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight focuses on activities, transactions and system settings within the procure-to-pay business cycle.

Unlike any other software product, the BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight uses concise, clearly described rules and reports to monitor automatically and continuously for exceptions, based on the unique business needs of an organization, division or group of users. It detects fraud and violations of business rules quickly, instead of months after the fact, as an external audit or spot check would.

According to Scott Samels, head of internal audit at McCormick & Company, "Approva's vision addresses some of the most critical elements of compliance - user authorizations, system settings and transactions. We're very excited about the promise that this new product line holds."

With the introduction of the BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight, Approva builds on the strengths of its already widely deployed Authorizations Insight (for monitoring of user roles and responsibilities) and solidifies its position as a leader in enterprise controls management. As organizations move from documentation to enforcement of controls, the breadth of the BizRights product family allows them to detect control violations or business exceptions; remediate issues quickly and efficiently; and prevent new violations from occurring.

To help companies improve overall control, the BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight saves time and improves quality by continuously checking for:

--Compliance issues such as exceptions in the three-way match process or untimely recording of goods or invoices received.

--Inefficiencies such as duplicate payments or extensive use of one-time vendors.

--Opportunities for fraud, such as those which arise during manual general ledger entries, or with the use of alternate payees.

With continuous monitoring and automatic alerts, the BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight enables organizations to focus not on the 90 percent of their business that is going according to plan, but on the critical 10 percent of their activities where violations are likely to be found.

The knowledge base for the BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight, which was defined by experts in compliance, efficiency and fraud prevention, enables organizations to identify areas of high risk immediately. Approva's user-friendly approach enables ongoing adjustments to meet organizational needs without custom development and programming work. With Approva's Process Controls Workbench, Process Insights such as the BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight can be quickly and easily configured to meet the unique needs of each customer's ERP environment.

"The Procure-to-Pay Insight provides unprecedented visibility into a large organization's day-to-day operations," said Prashanth (PV) Boccasam, CEO of Approva. "The BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight builds on our already strong foundation in compliance, and enables our customers to address not only the immediate challenges of Sarbanes-Oxley, but also longer term business challenges such as inefficiency and fraud."

The BizRights Procure-to-Pay Insight is Approva's first Process Insight. Approva plans to deliver additional Process Insights, such as Order-to-Cash, Payroll and Financial Close in early 2005. As Approva introduces these Insights, customers will be able to improve compliance and efficiency for their most critical business operations using the same platform and toolset that they use for Authorizations and Procure-to-Pay.

About Approva Corporation

Approva Corporation is a leader in enterprise controls management software for ERP business processes. Continuous monitoring has become increasingly critical as companies consolidate their ERP instances, upgrade to new versions and roll out ERP to more users. Complying with government regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, amplifies the need for companies to increase the frequency, accuracy and depth of their audit process. In contrast to existing snapshot-in-time tools or manual solutions, Approva BizRights(R) product suite is an integrated monitoring business application that is continuous, business-friendly and proactive. Its business user-oriented solutions help financial executives, business managers, application security and auditors continuously identify, document, test, remediate and monitor business controls. The end results are greater visibility into business risk, improved compliance and increased efficiency. For more information visit us at www.approva.net.