OVERVIEW

Internal audits are complex affairs for any business and they impact the rest of the business functionalities requiring various assessments and functional adjustments done in an agile and scalable manner. A global manufacturing client of Bitwise required an end-to-end technical solution that helped automate the entire audit process and smartly leveraged digital technologies to enable automation capabilities.

CHALLENGES

For years, the client’s auditing process was functioning manually to a major extent which required start-to-end transformation. The absence of an integrated and agile system posed numerous challenges impacting the efficiency and accuracy of various audit functions and affected visibility into crucial factors such as compliance, governance, risk assessment and control, etc.

The key challenges that were identified:

• Absence of digital infrastructure to support automated functionalities
• 90% manual dependency
• Absence of an integrated and standardized platform for audit plans, schedules & updates
• Challenges in maintaining audit progress & status records
• Major dependencies on physical documents
• Coordination challenges
• Lack of accuracy and efficiency
• Lack of a centralized reporting system
• Limited visibility into risk factors & limited preparedness
• Lack of synchronization with other departments
• Lack of collaboration between auditor & auditee

These challenges were setting off different department-specific bottlenecks and impacted overall business efficiency.

The key business functions that were affected:

• Planning
• Procurement
• Risk management
• Data security
• Corporate governance

This required transforming and better integrating the entire audit process and building a solution that took into account the various dependencies and functionalities to promote better efficiency, accuracy, agility, collaboration and scalability.

THE CLIENT PERSPECTIVE BEHIND THE PARTNERSHIP

The client had identified the need for agile automation to enhance its audit process and a strategic approach that could deliver it with a value-proposition that considered the collaboration, scalability, and resilience as the main aspects.

Bitwise helped the client achieve all its criteria by building a state-of-the-art solution that had embedded automation for the entire audit process and leveraged smart digital solutions for better efficiency.

The core advantages that were considered:

• Deep expertise in technology innovation & automation
• Capabilities to deliver end-to-end transformation
• Single value partner
• Proven methodologies
• Technology partnerships
• A clear understanding of Audit functionalities
• Domain expertise

OUR APPROACH: “Agile transformation”

The first step was scaling the digital infrastructure to deploy the solution. Bitwise helped the client scale core infrastructure and successfully leveraged RPA and cloud technologies to create an end-to-end Audit Management System. The solution transformed the audit process, significantly improved collaboration, and reduced the time involved while optimizing the existing resources.

• The Audit Management System developed by Bitwise, standardized enterprise-wide audit functions by enabling role-based workflows through AD integration.
• It provided a rich, intuitive UI for better management of the entire Audit Lifecycle and seamless experience for diverse users. This included an Audit Dashboard and Analytics Reports to help monitor overall audit workflows and risks.
• It streamlined department-specific audit functions by enabling configuration flexibility to simultaneously manage multiple types of audits and ensured integration of the audit process with enterprise applications.
• It enabled agile management of exceptions and corrections and better collaboration.
• It provided a dedicated risk register to track/prioritize/mitigate/manage/ monitor risks, incidents, controls, and actions. It automatically calculated HRN values as well as residual risk value based on system recommendation. In addition to that, it enabled complex reporting features like Risk Detection & Monitoring, Risk Assessment, Aging Analysis, Delay Analysis, etc. which allow organizations to implement industry best practices for efficient audit execution.
• It offered many advanced capabilities such as built-in workflows, delay tracking, email-based notifications, reminders, lazy approvals, task delegation, proactive alerts, etc.

HOW BITWISE SOLUTION ALIGNED WITH THE CLIENT VISION

The client leveraged the solution to automate the end-to-end audit process and derived tangible benefits for different business users:

• Evolved, digitized user experience
• Reduced manual dependency & errors with much greater collaboration
• Smart planning, scheduling & resource allocation
• Easy configuration & management of different types of audits
• Better monitoring of audit status & progress
• Both annual & monthly planning & tracking facilities
• Real-time recording of audit meetings, participants & observations
• Better handling of exceptions & non-conformities
• Dedicated reports module with customized reporting ability
• Ease to demonstrate compliance to standards clauses
• Easy to explain audits & show artifacts during external audits
• Increased security & better governance
• Highly effective risk assessment & control abilities

TRANSFORMATION THAT FOLLOWED

The quality and efficiency of audit outputs govern how a business is going to tackle critical challenges ranging from compliance to managing costs. It is one of the most vital functions for any growing business and it can certainly disrupt the business equations if it’s not optimized for scalability, agility, and resilience.

The solution developed by Bitwise enabled the manufacturing client to not only achieve its audit automation vision but also to leverage analytics and other digital functionalities to derive real business value. It also added a lot of ease for audit teams and enabled them to deliver the goals more effectively. In the following months, the client successfully performed various audits with the minimum negative impact of departmental performances and even achieved better synchronization between different departments with improved efficiency in audit functions across the enterprise.

TECHNOLOGY