Audit Work Management

Defined as those tools that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of audits completed by the organization. 

Marketplace Drivers

• Increase in virtual teams that collaborate around the world.

• Move towards creating expert systems filled with knowledge repositories.

• Trend towards paperless processing.

• Increased reliance on the Internet and Email to collaborate.

Benefits

• Provides research and knowledge repositories to all auditors.

• Assists in the project management of audit activities.

• Automated routing of tasks (workflow) based on the lifecycle of a particular workpaper.

• Move compliance work from stale written documentation to a robust data reporting structure.

• Allows for virtual collaboration which increases efficiency and response time to questions/issues.

• Provides a single, up-to-date repository of audit work, thereby reducing the duplication of data storage and retrieval time.  

• Role-based user access and security can be established throughout the application.

• Improves efficiency and consistency of audit work.

Vendor Selection Considerations

• Performance

• Reputation and Experience

• Stability

• Customer support

• Pre-loaded audit work checklists

• Integration between risk assessment, data analysis, and audit work management

• Scalable database

• Interoperability with existing computer architecture

• Ease of use

• Price

• Implementation and support services

• Simple, common sense methodology with integrated training