How to Streamline the Audit Process
by Joseph Kirkpatrick / August 30th, 2019
The audit process can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. When you hire an auditing firm to streamline the audit process, you avoid many of the unknowns that usually plague organizations on their compliance journeys. At KirkpatrickPrice, we use the Online Audit Manager to streamline the audit process and give you the assurance you deserve when completing an audit. What is the Online Audit Manager? How is it different than any other audit process? Whether it’s your very first audit or several that you do annually, the Online Audit Manager can be a game changer.
Changing the Game with the Online Audit Manager
The Online Audit Manager is an audit delivery tool that allows KirkpatrickPrice to streamline the audit process for an organization. This online portal guides you through audit objectives, requirements, and necessary documentation all in one place. Whether your organization has multiple audits or a single audit, the Online Audit Manager allows you to streamline the audit process and combine the necessary compliance requirements into easily managed tasks. With the online portal, you can communicate with the auditor, receive remediation guidance, prepare effectively for your onsite visit, and manage progress in real time. Why would you settle for a complicated, chaotic audit process when you can choose to streamline the audit process?
How does a streamlined audit process help you? Let’s look at four ways using the Online Audit Manager can aid your organization on its compliance journey.
The Benefits of Streamlining Your Audit Process
- Know Where You Are in Your Audit: One of the greatest benefits when you streamline your audit process is that your organization knows the exact stage of the audit process that it is in at all times. You don’t need to wonder what is left or if you need to do anything else to fulfill compliance objectives. You can simply log into the Online Audit Manager and check your progress.
- Save Time: When you streamline the audit process, you save your organization a great deal of time. What may have taken hours to discuss during an onsite visit, can be reduced drastically through the online portal. With a streamlined audit process, your onsite visit can focus on assessing your physical controls and reviewing documentation as the preliminary data has already been gathered.
- Reduce Your Audit Costs: Conducting an audit without the Online Audit Manager leads to wasted time, and with unnecessary time comes unnecessary cost. When you streamline the audit process, your organization reduces the need for extra costs. Quality audits are expensive, but streamlining your audit softens the cost to your organization. Plus, our online portal is a part of our audit cost, so there is no extra charge for using this platform.
- Simplify the Audit Process: The most important benefit to your organization is that the Online Audit Manager dramatically simplifies the audit process. Completing an audit is a big deal for an organization and any tool that provides clarity and simplification to the process is a tool your organization should use. The Online Audit Manager is the simplifying tool you have been looking for.
In many aspects of our lives we’re looking for simpler, more efficient ways to get work done. Why is the audit process any different? To get the most of out of your compliance journey, your organization needs to streamline the audit process.
One of the things that we’ve learned since providing audit services since 2005, is that we’ve turned the audit process on its end. You begin working with us through our Online Audit Manager. You work through a series of questions. You provide evidence. You have weekly calls with your auditor to review those things. Ultimately, you see the progress bar in the Online Audit Manager moving and you understand exactly where you are in the audit process. One of the things that I’ve learned when clients tell us in working with other firms is that they’ve never understood where they were. How much more is left? Is the auditor going to ask for more evidence? Using our Online Audit Manager, you always know exactly what the progress is of whether or not the auditor has reviewed your submission. When you’re waiting for that final step, the completion of your audit and the report, you have visual understanding of exactly where you are. You have the assurance in knowing that an auditor isn’t going to surprise you with some last-minute requests.
