As organizations undergo rapid changes, audit departments are increasingly under pressure. Nick Rafferty explores how organizations can adopt a more efficient and agile approach to managing their ever-growing array of audits.
If a single word could be used to summarise the challenges facing today’s audit departments, it would be ‘change’. Those departments are in a state of constant transformation, being asked to perform more audits than ever before, and to look at areas including IT, operations, quality assurance and third parties. They are also being asked to provide assurance on business operations and risk management, to evaluate compliance, and to advise the organization, all with limited audit resources. Meanwhile, the wider legislative and regulatory landscapes are growing ever more complex, forcing audit teams to add more tasks to their workload.
As a result, audit teams are under greater pressure than ever before: and yet too many of them are still managing their processes in ways that simply don’t make sense, using manual documents, spreadsheets and email chains. This way of working was already cumbersome a few years ago, but as audit’s responsibilities become broader and more complex, it has become unsustainable.
Now, therefore, more than ever, it’s vital that organizations take an agile approach to internal audit management that is fully scalable and flexible, enables accurate and comprehensive recording and reporting and, ultimately, will support the business now and into the future.
The author
Nick Rafferty, COO SureCloud Limited
Read the publishers version here