Consider Solutions

In today’s environment, with effective controls and compliance moving up the agenda, management are moving from an expectation that they must have a documented controls framework and compliance process to the need for more efficiency in these areas. The start of this is the rationalisation of controls to those that are genuinely critical to the business, thus reducing the overall inventory of controls to be tested.

However, the major effort and expense is in the testing and monitoring of controls and related information especially in large, geographically dispersed organizations with multiple operating units, which can exceed 100 in large organisations.  Standardising and centralizing key financial functions can help, but the problem and cost remains high for a process which typically only provides sample based assurance of controls. Management and stakeholders expect to be able to get 100% assurance (or as close as practical) on the efficacy of controls and the management of the associated risks, on a permanent, continuous, consistent, complete and permanent basis. This requires the monitoring of 100% of the activities that are governed by the control, where possible. This is only economically viable with automation which can dramatically reduce the cost of control, both internal and external.