Today’s business landscape has grown in its complexity and interconnectivity, making it necessary for organizations to manage risk from an integrated, organizational lens. Organizations are now expected to be more collaborative, both within and outside internal audit (IA), and agile in how organizations deliver projects and services. So how do we meet this challenge? By building a proactive and agile program with real-time awareness into the organization’s processes – the old ways of spreadsheets, documents, and emails just don’t cut it anymore.
In order to properly build an agile IA and compliance program, the organization needs:
· A system and process that provides you real-time visibility
· A team that has access to a simple, automated system or process to understand project expectations and communicate state of completion, including in quickly resolving deviations from plan
· A system or process that allows project managers to monitor execution in real-time, so they can take corrective actions
A more agile and cohesive risk management and internal audit system enables organizations to manage this risk at a steady pace and helps to protect any potential fallout throughout the organization. This improved agility will help the organization as it strives to increase effectiveness in managing a vast number of requirements across risk and compliance.
Managing risk in isolation, without an agile and effective internal audit and risk management system, will fail the needs of the dynamic, modern business environment. Technology must be allowed to integrate the system into the context of business as a whole if the organization hopes to have the agility to stay on top of changing risk.
With its company-wide perspective and inherent objectivity, IA has an opportunity to demonstrate role-model processes, to provide the much-needed, efficient and effective leadership, framework, and follow-through across the organization.
This role includes the important and unique duty of providing the necessary assurance to the organization’s senior directors and executives on the overall effectiveness of the organization’s governance and risk management procedures.It is uniquely positioned to recommend improvements on these procedures, as well as provide advice on the implementation of said improvements. This influential role is the foundation of any effective corporate governance program and architecture.
Ensuring your IA processes are at a proper level of maturity is critical in being able to fully monitor and understand the dynamic, modern world of business and effectively evaluate the organization’s risk and compliance across the organization holistically. When organizations approach IA through these manual, error-prone processes without collaboration spread throughout the organization, the mesh and web of information scattered throughout the organization amplifies risk, creating a possible fatal mistake. Organizations need complete visibility and versatility in understanding and protecting IA processes.
