Recently I stumbled on the Aberdeen Group’s report on “Beyond Demonstrating Compliance: The Reinvention of Internal Audit” and had no choice but to read the complete report. What a wealth of information and a must read for an organization that insists on Continuous Compliance for their customers and stakeholders. According to the report top performers achieve a “6.9% decrease in average time to issue an internal audit report, a 5.6% decrease in the average total cost per audit completed, a 7.4% increase in the number of automated control and a 1.2% decrease in the number of audit deficiencies. “ Just think; these numbers directly impact your bottom-line.
Another key metric is that best-in-class performers have 4.7 less Full-Time-Equivalent (FTE) internal audit staff than all others surveyed. This translates into a $400,000 savings!
The burning question would be how?
The first thing that resonated with me was that “among best-in-class companies, the mission and role of internal audit is defined within a wider governance framework and communicated throughout the organization.” This echoed the exact sentiment of us here at The Garland Group. Continuous Compliance extends beyond the doors of the IT department to the entire enterprise and simply cannot be achieved without collaboration. This wider governance framework can only happen with transparency, knowledge share, and communication between departments, business units and locations.
Another key take away was their approach to risk and risk management. Best-in-class companies understand that they cannot simply focus on financial risk or IT risk but that operational risk, strategic risk and enterprise risk as a whole needs to be examined. They clearly understand the need to “adopt a standardized approach to identifying, classifying and prioritizing risks.”
Other key strategies to propel them beyond compliance included having “a corporate focus and collaboration among stakeholders, knowledge management, selecting the appropriate tools with effective deployment, and performance measurement”
Get the report from Aberdeen, and if you need assistance in achieving continuous compliance contact us today.