A fast-changing global environment demands that businesses have both financial stability and liquidity. The right outcomes depend on continuous rigour in governance, models, and processes across a business’s finance function. A key question that business leaders should be asking themselves is whether they are managing their financial risk in order to power their business performance.
Internal controls within any business environment are vital in ensuring that the business operates effectively without much intervention from the business leaders. Many businesses do not have the capacity or the expertise to ensure that adequate systems and controls are in place across their business, which hinders their ability to accelerate the pace of growth and increase business value.
Internal controls within any business environment are vital in ensuring that the business operates effectively without much intervention from the business leaders. Many businesses do not have the capacity or the expertise to ensure that adequate systems and controls are in place across their business, which hinders their ability to accelerate the pace of growth and increase business value.
To transform existing business internal controls we will:
- Develop an understanding of the business process and related key controls to determine whether these processes produce valid, accurate and complete information.
- Identify control gaps in the respective processes, and design key controls to respond to the risks identified.
- Assist in creating systems within the business, where required, to ensure that the necessary controls exist.
- Test the effectiveness of controls to ensure they work consistently and as designed.
- Develop data analytics to move beyond sample based internal auditing and test 100% of data populations and to relate the previously unrelated.
- Map significant business process flow charts and identify key controls together with the development of policies and procedures for each business process.
- Provide “on-the-job coaching” to allocated staff within the business, whilst closely supervising the implementation of newly designed/aligned control processes.
Where the business has well-established internal controls in place, as a leader of your business you would want to know that risk management functions, security processes and regulatory compliance are operating effectively, as this would ensure operational efficiency and financial reliability of your business, as well as safeguarding your assets. In order to obtain this comfort you require assurance, independent of your finance or management team, to have an unbiased view.
Internal Audit would provide this independent view, as it comprises your business’s financial watchdog, tasked with objectively examining your financial documents, reviewing operating procedures and assessing regulatory compliance. As many businesses lack the capacity to staff a separate internal audit function, our solution is to provide the necessary skills and resources to your business, which include:
- Agreeing a comprehensive plan with management or the audit committee to suit the needs of your business.
- Identifying the good, the bad and the ugly in the business’s financial and operational processes.
- Providing insights into where gaps exist within the control framework, which could lead to possible loss of assets, errors and fraud, as well as any deficiencies in existing controls which are not operating as designed.
- Recommending the implementation of financial and operational processes, to address gaps and deficiencies.