ERP VITA Regulatory Advantages
Regulatory & Compliance - Advantage 1
VITA™ regulatory advantage #1: “Do it yourself” adjustment for new Government rules/regulations
ERP software buyers often find themselves trapped into an ongoing cycle of having to purchase new software modules to meet new government regulations, laws, compliance requirements or “best practices” suggested by local, regional, state, federal or inter-government agencies. Such changes are becoming more frequent, with various different governing bodies taking office and introducing new government practices, and the need to regularly adjust ERP solutions is an unavoidable fact. UNIT4 Business Software recognizes that what is avoidable is the constant need to pay external systems integration (SI) professionals each time a regulatory change is made.
The Agresso method of dealing with such requirements bypasses the ERP industry’s typical approach of requiring a new module for virtually every new regulatory change. 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 organizes 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 (Reporting or Analytics) to adjust or comply with new government regulations or legal compliances, quickly and easily.
Regulatory & Compliance - Advantage 2
VITA™ regulatory advantage #2: Easily compare new and old reporting standards
C-level executives often want to compare new and old reporting standards to:
- 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, analyze all relevant account rules and modify them as required against different transaction types.
Regulatory & Compliance - Advantage 3
VITA™ regulatory advantage #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 analyze 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.
Organizations 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. A prime example of this concept can be seen in Agresso Canadian customers. By the end of 2009 they had to conform to Canada’s Public Sector Accounting (PSA) Board Requirements, as part of IFRS rules to determine the “true” cost of an asset. Previous legislation only derived this cost from the year an asset was acquired, rather than depreciating the asset’s cost over its useful life. To accommodate this change, some ERP users needed two sets of accounting books/reports, had to re-code at software application level, or even had to purchase new “updated” modules; Agresso customers simply needed to make the relevant changes to the existing period limit, once again conforming with minimal effort thanks to VITA.