Lawson Software and its parent company Infor are adding governance capabilities to their ERP (enterprise resource planning) software with the acquisition of Approva, announced Wednesday. Terms of the deal, which closed Sept. 1, were not disclosed.
Approva's products fall into the category of CCM (continuous controls monitoring), and are used to automatically monitor controls applied to various applications in an organization, thereby helping to detect fraud, non-compliance with regulations and other problems. It competes with companies such as ACL and Greenlight Technologies.
Work is already afoot on tying Approva's software to financials ERP packages from Lawson and Infor, which acquired Lawson earlier this year. Approva's integration with third-party applications will continue to be supported, according to a statement. The company's partners include Oracle, SAP and IBM.
The acquisition ties into a larger trend, as large enterprise software vendors grow their product portfolios to meet increased government regulations. SAP released a major new version of its GRC (governance, risk and compliance) suite earlier this year after three years of development.
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com