Now, let’s think about shareholders for a second. Remember them, guys who are paying for all the show? What we have from them?
Mid-size and large companies, or holdings, have management bodies such as Audit Committee, Risk Committee, Shareholders Assembly, acting as top-level control and management bodies in the institution. Typically assembled from experienced executives, experts and yes – shareholders, these fellows are very interested in the work of the company, but usually they process the information on “high level”, not peeking into small details. Good for them – good for all the others, some say.
So, what they have in their hands, what management tools? Let’s take the Audit Committee as a good example.
Each month, each quarter, they deal with the Internal and External Audit issues, examine at least identified high and critical risks, monitoring mitigation activities on wider scale, and so on. Tough things, lots of data, modest reporting capabilities, hard decisions.
Typical Audit Committee Report is the written report, usually not so large, consists from several units of information such as progress review of annual Audit Plan, discussing and approving individual Audit Reports and corrective measures, monitoring sectors’ efficiency rate (and delays) on solving problems identified by Audit, assessing controls on high level and guiding the Audit Team in its further steps.
Usual case is that for each monthly report CAE (Chief Audit Executive, Head of Audit Department) and one or two experienced auditors spend some time in preparing Audit Committee monthly report. That “some time” vary from company to company, but usually takes from 2 up to 6-7 man-days each month (e.g. 1-2 auditors x 1-2 days, plus 1-2 days CAE time). Besides that, the normal Audit Follow-Up Monitoring process (contacting each auditee, sending the request for status update and comments, gathering the responses, compiling them in Audit FB – usually Excel, reviewing of current statuses, reviewing and approving changes, additional check-ups) takes 4-8 of man-days each month for small size Audit Team, up to 5 people. The bigger the Audit Team -greater the work, since number of Findings is linearly increasing.
So, at the end of story each month you engage at least 10, 12 or more auditor man-days to gather all the necessary information to keep the Audit Follow-Up Database (well, still in Excel) and to produce some decent Audit Committee Monthly Report. Recalculated at annual level, that’s typically about 150 auditor man-days, not less than 14,000 $/€ per year at least in the banks in Balkans neighborhood. For the Western EU countries – calculate it 2-3 times more, at least.
So, what’s the catch?
FURIA helps in automation of Audit Follow-Up process by drastic reduction of time spent for gathering and processing information, but also with its advanced reporting capabilities helps in creation or effective reports that you even couldn’t make with limitations of tools you use (e.g. Excel) and maybe you didn’t dare to even try due to high costs (man-days, again).
With FURIA, Audit Departments are powered with proper tools that can generate advanced reports that automate the whole monthly/quarterly reporting to the Audit Committee. Suddenly, you realize that you actually spare significant audit time which you can use to perform at least 3-4 more process audits per year. That is a good catch!
Moreover, with FURIA reporting engine Audit Committee Reports get whole new set of dimensions and you have variety of options to ask for more from your Audit Department:
- nice and rich-looking Pies, Bars, Trees, Gantts or other type of visualized charts on
- open, closed, delayed issues,
- current delays in implementation of corrective actions on Audit Findings,
- issues by risk type or by risk levels,
- or mix of any of these dimensions,
- historical overview of the particular issue,
- excellent efficiency and productivity reports,
- overview of regulations incompliance findings, or fines, or their combination,
- plus – all of this per sector, per department, or per single process if you like.
And that’s just for the start!
Now, consider the options when you sit in the Audit Committee and wait for the whole month to see “what’s new” and how things are going with the “old” stuff.
How about putting you in the middle of that world? How about giving you direct hands-on in FURIA? No problem.
Once when you are granted with proper role of information reviewer (look, but don’t touch), and when you gain direct access to the information flow and reports,
- you don’t need to wait on anything,
- you can get any of Audit Monitoring reports,
- you can get any report directly, untouched,
- you can get it in the form that best pleases your needs,
- at any time,
- from any device,
- from anywhere.
Now, lets virtually start the actual Audit Committee meeting where everybody can, besides the delivered materials, drill-down and explore the Audit Follow-Up Database any way you like by taking instantly any report you like or simply “rolling” the REPORTING CUBE directly from your Excel.
OK, you are already prepared for the meeting but now you have also the proper tools in your hands, so let’s talk real things!
But, wait a moment? Is there MORE that you can actually get?
Considers the same dimensions of reporting capabilities open for you on ANY data processed in FURIA – Internal Control Reports, Compliance, Security, Risk. So, with FURIA engine widespread in your Control Environment you can actually mix and match ANY data, through ANY dimension, from ANY source, from ANY process, to cross-report on ANY particular regulation, internal or external standard. And of course, you can do it very quickly while listening any of the speakers on the meeting, preparing for “your moment”. And then, when some responsible persons make promise to finish some issue in next two months, open your FURIA interface, go to that particular issue and simply subscribe on that issue to get info about changes, to stay in touch with that thing until it is resolved.
How good is that?
Welcome to FURIA, the solution that matters!