Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes. -- www.theiia.org

Internal Auditors act as consultants both to senior executives and to the board. Their contribution is measured in their ability to assist senior administrators/managers and the board in the performance of their duties. The Internal Audit function accomplishes this by independently identifying risks, evaluating the design and implementation of management’s control systems, and making recommendations for improvement. Internal auditing aids by helping managers manage better and by bringing to management’s attention opportunities for improvement.

BPS Audit enables internal audit organizations to plan, execute and report on their audit process. This cohesive approach allows for continuous monitoring and improvement of the process.

1. Audit Universe Definition

The audit universe is the aggregate of all areas that are available to be audited within the organization. To define the universe, the auditor divides the organization into manageable auditable units, which may be defined in a number of ways, such as by organizational unit or division, or by process or by region.

BPS Audit allows for the construction of a multi-hierarchy universe to allow complete flexibility without comprising control and manageability. Advanced scoring and rating techniques within BPS Audit allow for the Audit Plan to be focused on the most important areas.

2. The Audit Plan

The Audit Plan establishes priorities and focuses Internal Audit activity to ensure it is consistent with the organization’s goals and objectives. In keeping with the IIA standards, most organizations follow a plan based on risk assessment.

A risk-based approach ensures that the most significant risks and the least controlled processes are audited most frequently. This maximizes the efficiency of what is usually a limited number of available audit resources.

BPS Audit enhances the audit planning cycle by allowing for unlimited number of scoring and rating mechanisms. Together with BPS OpRisk and BPS Compliance, scoring data from other processes can be included to build a converged planning process (RCSA scores can be rolled in, for example). These inputs to BPS Audit will reduce planning workload, and help to create a plan that is reusable and allows for more continuous monitoring and more complete coverage over the long term. BPS Audit incorporates multi year planning techniques to ensure the balance of completeness and budget is always maintained.

3. Audit Execution

BPS Audit incorporates all elements of Audit Execution into a single platform. BPS Audit features enhanced resource and project planning, integrated work paper management as well as surveys and dynamic process management.

Balancing of scarce resources is extremely important, and balancing multi-discipline teams across many regions can be a daunting task. BPS Audit includes advanced capacity and project planning, allowing you to assign your key resources to achieve the greatest chance of success. Continuous feedback against the Audit Plan allows for the audit managers to make key decisions before the schedule slips.

BPS Audit brings work paper management to the next level. Integrating Microsoft office with enterprise-grade document management streamlines the process of creating, reviewing and archiving work-papers. The BPS Suite brings advanced workflow capabilities to allow custom routing of all work-papers and audit evidence. If audits include surveys or questionnaires, the BPS Suite comes with a leading edge forms and question library management and delivery capability.

4. Audit Reporting and Finalization

From monitoring the progress of the audit plan to enterprise risk management dashboards, reporting is an important element of BPS Audit. BPS Audit provides out of the box and ad-hoc reporting and business intelligence features to allow you to customize the information delivered to the users’ desktop. Alerts and scheduled report delivery round out the BPS offering ensuring that the most important information is delivered as soon as it is needed.

With the amount of effort that goes into planning and executing each audit period, it is crucial to reclaim the knowledge gained. BPS Audit includes a project finalization process that ensures the knowledge is brought forward into future periods. Moreover, the planning cycle can be drastically reduced if the past audits are well understood. Utilizing the advanced reporting techniques and data from past audits Audit managers can easy schedule and prioritize the future audits.