Avantis - Transforming Your Governance, Risk and Compliance Processes
India embraced economic liberalisation in 1991, and became one of the largest growth engines in the world. Organisations, big and small, have expanded operations rapidly. Growth has included adding entities, businesses and geographies to the portfolio. In parallel, rapid regulatory reforms in India demand greater transparency, accountability and timeliness from businesses. Companies act of 2013, creation of RERA among others bears testimony to this effect. As a result, CXOs and Boards need sophisticated technology and tools to manage compliance and risk in their organisations. Headquartered in Pune, Avantis is a technology organization that has created a suite of products and solutions in Governance, Risk and Compliance focused on rapidly growing economies like India.Avantis bring highly flexible, scalable and secure technology which is user-friendly. The company has automation solutions in Compliance, Audit, ICFR and Loan against Shares Management. Avantis solutions help businesses migrate from ad-hoc, people-dependent and manual processes to institutionalized, process-oriented and automated processes. They offer smart reporting, automated alerts/escalations and advanced document management capabilities. A team of legal experts at Avantis constantly scans and analyses the legal and regulatory environment and updates compliance database. The solution has inbuilt intelligence that identifies compliance changes and generates automatic notifications to the impacted customers allowing them to stay focussed on their core business.
“We take pride in the fact that our clients simply love our product. We have invested heavily in building world class technology which has helped us grow rapidly. It is heartening to see our clients improve their efficiency and reduce their cost of compliance” quotes Rishi Agrawal, Founder and CEO, Avantis.
Avantis has been working closely with some of the largest enterprises in India. “We understand the pains of CXOs and have built our products to ease that pain” adds Sandeep Agrawal, Founder and Director, Avantis. Recently, Avantis added the Audit Management Product to its portfolio. Rishi said "We are really excited about launching our Audit Management Solution. Audit management is one of the critical business processes in any organisation. Even so, most organisations manage this process manually, leading to lack of standardisation and consistency in audit approach and methodology. At Avantis, we believe that a sophisticated technology product can help bring significant efficiencies, global best practices and discipline in tracking and management of Audit Items. Working with subject matter experts from around the country, we now have a best in class audit management solution."
Avantis’ ICFR product facilitates centralized monitoring of control testing and remediation planning. The product has capabilities such as RCM upload, sample test templates, document management, maker-checker mechanisms and smart reporting with automated alerts, reminders and escalations.
Approach to Distinguish Transformation of GRC in India GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) is a complex subject. Over the last decade or so, there has been a lot of focus on corporate governance, risk management and compliance in India. While the board, directors and key management personnel are far more accountable, they typically lack the right tools at their disposal. They still grapple with highly manual, paper based, people dependent risk and compliance processes. This happens, not because they are averse to adopting technology, but the right technology solution at the right price is not available to the vast majority of Indian companies. Either the solutions available in the Indian market are too expensive or fall short. This is where Avantis has found its niche.
This GRC player envisions taking the compliance and risk automation solutions to all Indian organisations. These companies should be able to adopt and operationalize Avantis’ solutions in days or weeks not months or years. The company is working with a vision of becoming a leader in Regulatory Technology Solutions.
There exist challenges when customers migrate from ad-hoc, people dependent and manual processes to institutionalised, process dependent and automated processes. Avantis has overcome these challenges with clients in their implementations along the years. The biggest challenge is cultural.
At junior levels, most organisations still feel comfortable with the paper-based, people dependent approach as the approach typically lacks clear accountability, transparency and traceability. However, the senior
and executive leadership is very keen to embrace the change and adopt the automation and framework based approach. Another challenge is that customers feel that an additional automation solution will need them to put in additional effort. However, as they start using the system, they realise that life has become easier.
Automation for Paperless Auditing
Audits typically involve multiple internal and external stakeholders who communicate extensively and lead to identification of risks and action plans. Audit Management is critical organisational process. It involves stakeholders at senior and executive levels who work towards identifying risks and plan its mitigation. Most of the audit management activities today are highly manual. Stakeholders typically use spreadsheet based approach, which is inefficient and highly repetitive. As a result, countless hours of expensive resources is spent on routine and mundane activities which can easily be automated.
Avantis has developed an automation solution, which automates the entire life cycle of Audit Management in organisations. The life cycle involves planning, scoping and scheduling audits, uploading the risk and control matrix, assigning audit items to auditors and then capturing the audit steps, observations and reporting. Avantis solution helps organisations significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to plan, customise and document an Audit. The outcomes of the Audit process are lot more standardised and consistent. In addition, the company’s automation solution helps clients get much closer to realising their dream of a paperless process.
Today, most organisations constantly grapple with closely tracking the action plans that have been identified and agreed upon by Management. Often, the specific action items get missed with no reminders and escalations with follow on built in place. Avantis completely solves this problem by having a highly flexible and framework based mechanism for tracking all audit items to closure. All in all, Avantis Automation Product functions to bring about standardisation, consistency, accountability confidentiality and control for organisations.
A Success Oriented Hardwork
Moreover, Avantis recently implemented Compliance, Audit and ICFR automation products at a leading NBFC headquartered in South India. This client is a subsidiary of a Multi Billion Dollar Transnational conglomerate. The client is a leading provider of Personal and Commercial vehicle finance, loan against property and construction equipment finance. The company also has a national presence with over 300 branches and thousands of crores in loan book. Avantis worked closely with executive leadership and identified over 4,500 compliances spread across multiple state and central regulatory bodies such as RBI, SEBI, Company Law, and CBEC among others. In addition, Avantis helped the client map all the critical events, checklists, branch level compliances including customer litigation. Over 150 users across the company currently use the product daily to keep a market leading NBFC compliant.
Following that, Avantis implemented its Audit Automation and ICFR testing automation product as well. The product supports over 300 audits every year. These audits are done across branches, locations, processes and businesses with detailed RCM uploads, scoping, planning, scheduling and execution of all the audits. The product is heavily leveraged by the internal audit team who use it to manage a paperless audit process.
Avantis has an aggressive roadmap to continue to bring world class technology solutions in the market. The company’s leadership brings extensive industry experience and a grand vision to become a key global player in Governance, Risk and Compliance space.
and executive leadership is very keen to embrace the change and adopt the automation and framework based approach. Another challenge is that customers feel that an additional automation solution will need them to put in additional effort. However, as they start using the system, they realise that life has become easier.
Automation for Paperless Auditing
Audits typically involve multiple internal and external stakeholders who communicate extensively and lead to identification of risks and action plans. Audit Management is critical organisational process. It involves stakeholders at senior and executive levels who work towards identifying risks and plan its mitigation. Most of the audit management activities today are highly manual. Stakeholders typically use spreadsheet based approach, which is inefficient and highly repetitive. As a result, countless hours of expensive resources is spent on routine and mundane activities which can easily be automated.
Avantis is a technology organization that has created a suite of products and solutions in Governance, Risk and Compliance focused on rapidly growing economies like India
Avantis has developed an automation solution, which automates the entire life cycle of Audit Management in organisations. The life cycle involves planning, scoping and scheduling audits, uploading the risk and control matrix, assigning audit items to auditors and then capturing the audit steps, observations and reporting. Avantis solution helps organisations significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to plan, customise and document an Audit. The outcomes of the Audit process are lot more standardised and consistent. In addition, the company’s automation solution helps clients get much closer to realising their dream of a paperless process.
Today, most organisations constantly grapple with closely tracking the action plans that have been identified and agreed upon by Management. Often, the specific action items get missed with no reminders and escalations with follow on built in place. Avantis completely solves this problem by having a highly flexible and framework based mechanism for tracking all audit items to closure. All in all, Avantis Automation Product functions to bring about standardisation, consistency, accountability confidentiality and control for organisations.
A Success Oriented Hardwork
Moreover, Avantis recently implemented Compliance, Audit and ICFR automation products at a leading NBFC headquartered in South India. This client is a subsidiary of a Multi Billion Dollar Transnational conglomerate. The client is a leading provider of Personal and Commercial vehicle finance, loan against property and construction equipment finance. The company also has a national presence with over 300 branches and thousands of crores in loan book. Avantis worked closely with executive leadership and identified over 4,500 compliances spread across multiple state and central regulatory bodies such as RBI, SEBI, Company Law, and CBEC among others. In addition, Avantis helped the client map all the critical events, checklists, branch level compliances including customer litigation. Over 150 users across the company currently use the product daily to keep a market leading NBFC compliant.
Following that, Avantis implemented its Audit Automation and ICFR testing automation product as well. The product supports over 300 audits every year. These audits are done across branches, locations, processes and businesses with detailed RCM uploads, scoping, planning, scheduling and execution of all the audits. The product is heavily leveraged by the internal audit team who use it to manage a paperless audit process.
Avantis has an aggressive roadmap to continue to bring world class technology solutions in the market. The company’s leadership brings extensive industry experience and a grand vision to become a key global player in Governance, Risk and Compliance space.
