GRC Software Industry Leader Reports Highlights of Successful Financial Year
Record Growth and Regional Expansion in 2014
ACL, the company that is transforming audit and risk management, reported record growth benchmarks, expanded regional sales coverage, furthered its position as leader for cloud-based audit and risk management, and released major upgrades to its suite of software solutions during the company’s fiscal year ending July 31, 2014.
During FY2014, ACL achieved the largest booked revenues in the company’s history. This included triple-digit growth in its cloud-based ACL™ GRC software business for the second year in a row, following the largest ACL GRC quarter on record in Q4 of FY2013.
New Customer Acquisitions Worldwide
Worldwide customer adoption of ACL GRC continued to earn strong market traction, including newly-added customer organizations across 25 countries: Alsco, Advanced Disposal, Arizona State University, ARS Humano, Aurora Health Care, Conair Corporation, Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, Energy Development Corporation, Glentel, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Massachusetts Department of Transportation, Northern Arizona University, Promens, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, Riverside Health System, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and Tennessee Department of Transportation.
Strategic Acquisition Drives Global Reach
These milestones were jumpstarted with ACL’s acquisition of Singapore-based The Prodigy Group, a leading GRC solutions provider in the South East Asia region, which closed in August 2013, at the start of the fiscal year.
“Acquiring The Prodigy Group was an exciting milestone for the company and a strategic move into a rapidly-growing region,” said Ross Paul, Vice President of Global Operations at ACL. “That transaction really set in motion the year that followed.”
Operational Highlights of Fiscal Year 2014
Other operational business highlights included:
- Garnering an industry-leading 44% customer Net Promoter Score, significantly surpassing GRC competitors’ average of -50%, indicating very unsatisfied customers for legacy category leaders.
- Inclusion on Gartner’s 2014 GRC Hype Cycle as a key vendor in eGRC Platforms and Transaction Controls Monitoring categories.
- Being highlighted with five awards and honourable mentions for ACL GRC, including two 2014 GRC Technology Innovation Awards by GRC 20/20 Research, LLC for: Integrating automated GRC monitoring with proactive surveys and questionnaires and Most complete, intuitive mobile interface for end-to-end audit management.
- Increasing attendance at annual customer conference, ACL Connections, by 30%—now one of the largest conferences in the category.
- Being recognized as a top employer in the province of British Columbia and successfully recruiting more than 80 new employees, including key leadership positions, joining from companies like SAP, EMC, Thomson Reuters, and Sophos.
- Forging a new partnership with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) to support the adoption of technology across 180 ICAI educational centers throughout India.
- Forging an enhanced principal partnership with The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and new partnership with the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG).
Key Product Portfolio Developments
Product portfolio highlights included:
- Enhancements to ACL GRC, a cloud-based risk and audit management solution offering reporting, dashboarding, and metrics for executives, audit committees, and other stakeholders.
o ACL GRC was made available in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German.
o Customers can now choose to have the software hosted in any of four data centers across North America, the European Union, or Asia, ensuring improved global customer experience and addressing data privacy requirements.
- Expanded ACL GRC mobile capabilities with ACL™ GRC for iOS, a native app for iPad and iPhone, and ACL™ GRC for Android.
- Upgrades to flagship data analytics software, ACL™ Analytics, providing users more efficiency and agility through enhanced importing and exporting capabilities, as well as new analytic reporting tools.
- A major update to ACL™ Direct Link for SAP® ERP and SAP® CRM, an SAP-certified data extraction add-on for ACL Analytics and ACL Analytics Exchange that solves SAP® data access challenges.
- Launching a free download of ACL™ Add-In for Excel®, a tool that increases usability and productivity for professionals performing audit, risk, and control work in Excel.
“Fiscal year 2014 was a key foundational year for ACL as we made major investments in product development, sales, regional expansion, and securing top talent,” said Laurie Shultz, President and CEO of ACL. “We believe that the GRC software market is at a pivotal point in its history and see a huge opportunity for ACL to disrupt the category and enable our customers to elevate the value they bring to their organizations.”
