APEX Analytix Introduces New Cloud Computing Platform for FirstStrike Procure-to-Pay Software

The announcement was made concurrently at the Institute of Financial Operations’ “Fusion 2012” conference in Nashville and at the Shared Services Outsourcing Network’s “European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week 2012” in Amsterdam.

To date FirstStrike has saved companies more than $2 billion in overpayments by detecting and preventing costly errors. APEX Analytix now will provide the software as a cloud-based service, supported by a highly secure infrastructure and managed services…

Companies will have an end-to-end, scalable environment that acts as an extension of their internal information technology resources, without any infrastructure investment. They also will have ready access to the latest software releases and upgrades and to comprehensive support delivered by the APEX Analytix team.

“Cloud-based FirstStrike solutions make it easier than ever for companies to monitor for overpayments and fraud, analyze shared services center metrics and improve their efficiency and cash flow,” says Steve Yurko, CEO of APEX Analytix. “With APEX Analytix managing and maintaining FirstStrike and the underlying infrastructure, companies can focus instead on continuously protecting and improving their operations.”

The FirstStrike modules now available over the cloud include:

•     FirstStrike Accounts Payable, which prevents overpayments, improves cash flow and tracks accounts payable metrics.
•     FirstStrike Purchasing, which detects pricing errors, analyzes spending and produces reports to support continuous procure-to-pay improvements.
•     FirstStrike Retail, which serves the unique and highly sophisticated purchasing and recovery audit needs of the retail industry.
•     FirstStrike Fraud Detect, which analyzes vendor, invoice and employee data and ranks potential fraudsters by risk score.
•     FirstStrike Vendor Portal, which enables vendors to check the status of their invoices and payments online in real-time, without having to contact a company’s accounts payable department.

FirstStrike uses secure, encrypted protocols to pull relevant procure-to-pay data daily from ERP platforms and legacy systems – creating a single, consolidated database for analysis and reporting. APEX Analytix stores the information in a SAS 70/SSAE 16-compliant data center with high availability, redundancy and fail-over capabilities. The data compiled can be segregated by business unit, geography or other parameters as required–from initial data capture to reporting and analytics.