Our SYNERGi team has recently developed an Audit Management tool. One of our Implementation Consultants highlights the major pain points our clients face when out speaking to them and pinpoints how SYNERGi can really help.
Auditing has always been the most important tool of determining the overall efficiency and health of an organisation. It helps ensure that they are running efficient operations, that a company is adhering to the latest regulatory standards and that their processes are being handled in the correct way. It also ensures continuous improvement, quality management and paves the way toward any necessary change that’s needed.
In today’s digital age, we are often surprised when talking to many new clients that they are still trying to conduct timely audits using traditional and outdated methods. Whether we’re speaking to Heads of Audit, Risk, Compliance, Internal/External auditors, Financial Auditors or Quality Assurance professionals, we always hear a similar pattern of day to day challenges and pain points that they face. Usually it comes down to managing hundreds of processes and procedures that are spread across multiple systems and departments. Often these aren’t joined up and it creates a real headache when it comes to the quarterly committee meetings to present the audit findings.
That’s why our SYNERGi development team have been dedicated over the past quarter to deliver an audit management tool that meets the needs of these clients; it is our primary goal to help these organisations find an easier and better way to manage their auditing moving forward.
So without exhausting the platform’s many benefits and features, how does the audit management tool really benefit your organisation?
Avoiding Duplication
A common pain point we encounter is that of duplication – not understanding what audits are being conducted, covering the same things within the audits and no feedback being given and communicated around the business to improve any processes. That’s why having a central place or platform like SYNERGi is extremely useful to the business and provides instant feedback which is driven by the audit calendar feature and the workflows that provide the automation.
Easy to use Workflows
The workflows that are built into SYNERGi help you create audit plans, organise them in a logical structure and execute them. It helps you plan a step by step audit and is a lot easier to follow the actual plan whilst linking to the actual work itself. Scope letters are easily defined and accessible throughout, feedback is provided quicker and remediation actions are sent via constant reminders – so whether it’s a 60 day or a 90 day deadline, you can report back in a more assured manner. This also allows risk control to be applied more successfully. You can ensure who is conducting the audit and be notified with any updates. The calendar feature allows pop ups of this information and allows in a simple click of a button to access useful information like Scope documents and worksheets rather than manually having to find them. Usually such information isn’t all within one platform, and rather stored amongst multiple drives and folders on your PC or laptop.
Reporting more confidently
We often hear from clients that when it comes to reporting that this usually consists of time consuming tasks of gathering all the data, running around chasing people for information, time out of diaries wasted and then someone whose job it is to collate all the information in time for the committee meeting.
The committee will want to know how many remediations did we issue this quarter? What is the status of this quarter’s audits? How many are red? Amber? Green? How many are overdue? How many have been closed?
These are common questions that you’ll often face in the quarterly meetings, and usually gathering this information is an arduous task at best. SYNERGi’s reporting tool allows you to easily pull together findings and actions to generate a draft report, which you can then tailor and adapt for your meetings. You’ll also get access to real-time audit data, history and analysis of audit results with audit status tracking reports and dashboards.
Look to the future with an automated approach
To ensure continuous improvement within your organisation, an automated audit management tool like SYNERGi is invaluable. Having a methodical way of checking that your audit processes are working the best way possible, and being able to track the status all the way through and report the findings in a much easier sense, allows your company to grow more successfully.
We are happy to provide a demonstration of SYNERGi’s Audit Management tool to your teams via an online WebEx or we can come to your premises and present the tool to a number of your stakeholders. To request this, please click here.