The VITA™ Advantage for handling regulatory and compliance changes
Agresso's VITA architecture enables Businesses Living IN Change (BLINC™) to quickly and cost-effectively handle regulatory changes that come along after the Agresso solution is installed.
Industries and organisations facing new regulations and compliance mandates like IFRS and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) don’t have the luxury to evaluate whether the required change is cost-effective and/or necessary. They must either comply, or face legal and financial consequences.
Agresso Business World offers customers unrivalled post-implementation agility – the ability to alter the system to reflect organisational changes and to get new information out as required, without having to call in external help. This is especially relevant to dynamic, mid-market public sector and professional services organisations that operate in fast changing environments but need to keep costs under control.
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VITA – the platform for agility
Agresso’s VITA architecture delivers ongoing post-implementation agility – the ability for business users to quickly and cost-effectively make unlimited but controlled changes to their business operations after the Agresso solution is installed and in use. This is because the data, business process and delivery methodology (reporting and analysis) are intelligently tied together and synchronised, making the process simple, quick and efficient. More importantly, thanks to VITA, changes to support regulatory requirements are typically made at the graphical user interface (GUI) level, by business users with little or no IT intervention.
With Agresso’s VITA architecture, dynamic organisations can now cut or re-allocate the often enormous IT budgets put aside each year to pay for modifications to their software infrastructure to accommodate changes in regulations and compliance requirements.
VITA – regulatory advantages
Ultimately, Agresso customers gain an eight-fold business advantage, when faced with changes caused by regulatory and compliance requirements:
1. “Do it yourself” adjustment for new Government rules/regulations
The need to regularly adjust ERP solutions is an unavoidable fact but – with Agresso – what is avoidable is the constant need to pay external “systems integration” (SI) professionals each time a regulatory change is made.
Agresso customers can typically make changes themselves – easily and painlessly – without the need to purchase or implement “add on” software modules. The Agresso VITA architecture and “drag and drop” graphical approach organises key business information and related processes using clear and concise tree structures familiar to users of Microsoft office solutions. Making changes is simple as the tree structures are embedded with additional “relations” intelligence. Users can simply create a new regulation folder, add in the “rules,” and instantly modify the data, processes and delivery methodology (analytics or reports) to adjust or comply with new government regulations or legal compliances, quickly and easily.
2. Easily compare new and old reporting standards
C-level executives often want to compare new and old reporting standards to:
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• examine differences
• ensure they are compliant
• determine any operational changes required.
With Agresso, reporting standards can easily be created side by side within one report – to show the differences. Users can view the differences graphically to understand the developments over time – all in a single comparative view.
This capability is delivered by VITA, which is intelligent and sophisticated enough to capture data relationships, analyse all relevant account rules and modify them as required against different transaction types.
3. Flexible chart of accounts for future reporting requirements
Adopting IFRS and SOX regulations or changes to such rules are no problem for Agresso customers. Users can view and create tree and relationship structures to maintain and analyse parallel charts of accounts so that they can quickly highlight the effect of any regulation changes, eliminating the need to keep multiple separate sets of accounting books.
With Agresso, organisations can also accommodate upcoming rule changes by placing period limits on accounts to follow one set of accounting values, then simply re-name them, and change their attributes to reflect new values.
4. Making changes to report financial data with non-financial data
Agresso balance tables allow organisations to simply incorporate columns of both financial and non-financial data. There are numerous ways that financial data can be tied to other relevant types of data; for example, the tying of payroll to organisational pay grades and specific geographic cost of living segmentation, multiple currency exchange rates, etc.
Agresso allows the user to analyse, compare, contrast and reformat such different types of data, using either standard key performance indicators or with customised KPIs, from the user interface without the need to re-code the application.
5. Updating reports that are tied to new account structures
Agresso’s tree structure is “intelligent”. Business users can easily create a new account structure, and depending on whether they are assigned to specific budgets/setups or not, VITA will redirect them appropriately. This ensures that unassigned data is appropriately directed and coded to the correct business processes and reporting methodology. VITA can also provide financial “range” values to reflect relationships within budgets; for example, all items over an amount “x” must follow one business process for approval, while all items over “y” take another process route. All unassigned items might take a third process route. Again, VITA allows such changes to be made easily by authorised business users without technical or external input and can be changed as often as desired.
6. Changing document and content management platforms
Agresso VITA provides an important extra layer of data security for document archiving. New word documents can be merged with archived records to create “alternative libraries” of data. The Agresso solution is agnostic as to which tools are used to collect, compare and manage data – the GUI tree structure is easily modified. This capability is particularly useful in regulatory situations where the rules can change for areas such as recognising receivables, accounting for travel expenses, and managing résumés/CVs. Appropriate items can be “locked in” for security purposes and/or adjusted easily for items that should be updated, all by users.
7. Changing business rules tied to compliance monitoring
Nowhere are there more challenges on the auditing side than those connected to compliance monitoring. The VITA architecture enables compliance conformity changes to be carried out by business users at the GUI level. Authorised users can adjust workflow models easily with the VITA graphical process model, to set up new steps and to add or adjust rules. The change could be tied to financial “values” or “process steps” and is easily performed by Agresso users without IT intervention.
8. Changing financial consolidation data
Unlike some competitive systems, Agresso provides financial consolidation seamlessly within its solution set. In addition, changes made to add or subtract data can be performed simply at the GUI level by adjusting existing consolidation trees to add or subtract new clients, product lines, change associate company status, etc. Business and financial users can establish and perform intercompany transactions, eliminations, etc., using simple “trigger” rules. For Agresso’s competitors, changes in this area must be done at the application's programming level, which takes time and often significant external cost.
Further information
To discover more about the full range of ways that we can help your organisation, please:
- either read more about Agresso Business World or the Agresso VITA™ architecture
- or read more on this site about our sector focus, solutions, services or company
- or contact us to discuss your requirements in more detail.