Internal Audit

The demands on internal auditing in companies are increasing more and more. The trend is moving away from a purely auditing function of internal audit towards an increasing acceptance as a business management consultant and impulse generator for the company. Internal audit therefore takes on a significant role in the company, not only for ensuring compliance.

Your Internal Audit Challenges

During the course of a business year, internal audit regularly experiences heavy peaks in workload, as the even distribution of audit activities often cannot be brought into line with the workflows of other departments. However, the capacities in the internal audit departments of companies are often limited and not geared to such peaks. In addition, auditing tasks are becoming increasingly differentiated and specialised, so that it often does not make sense for companies to maintain the appropriate resources for the diversified tasks of internal auditing in every department.

Our services in connection with internal auditing are therefore particularly relevant for you in the following situations:

• Generally no internal audit available and either one is to be set up internally or permanently outsourced (Outsourcing Internal Audit)

• Lack of internal capacity and expertise to establish an internal audit function

• General workload peaks in the internal audit department

• Lack of internal capacity and specialized knowledge to perform audit reviews in specialized areas

• "Incidents" in the area of accounting and management reporting or IT operations that require rapid and extensive clarification on the one hand, and the implementation of measures to prevent future incidents on the other hand

• Strong corporate growth and the associated reduction in direct control options and the need to improve internal monitoring systems

• Increasing requirements from supervisory bodies and other stakeholders

Approaches to the challenges of internal audit

Our services in the area of Internal Audit Support include in particular:

• Preparation of audit plans and coordination with the management or the supervisory or advisory board

• Provide rapid, operational and pragmatic hands-on internal audit support to achieve timely and comprehensive transparency

• Deployment of a wide range of specialists from the areas of finance and IT for the full coverage of critical issues

• Structured and traceable documentation

• Confidential, selective internal auditing activities on behalf of the Supervisory Board or Advisory Board

• Design and implementation of your internal audit (structural and procedural organization) tailored to your needs, e.g. development of outsourcing or co-sourcing concepts,

• Setting up the auditing framework,

• Review of your internal audit with regard to adequacy and effectiveness as well as compliance with regulatory requirements and identification of optimization potential,

Our audit techniques are based on both the traditional approach (including review of design documentation, interviewing, observation, review, and verification/walkthrough testing) and digital, data-driven audit approaches. Data analyses are now part of the standard repertoire of internal auditing, as they offer significant advantages:

• With the help of target-oriented machine data analyses, significant efficiency potentials can be raised in testing.
• In addition, auditing can use data analyses to counteract a decline in the quality of audits and provide well-founded results. This can counteract the fear that quality in auditing is deteriorating as a result of the ongoing reduction in staffing levels.
• Within the framework of continuous, permanent and ongoing auditing (continuous auditing), audits can be carried out in a very timely manner. However, experience shows that this is only possible with the help of data analyses.
   

As part of our support services in the area of internal auditing, we discuss the possibilities and use of such methods with you. The use of mass data analyses is particularly suitable for very large data volumes or for ensuring the completeness of the audit subject.

In addition to content-driven data analyses, process mining offers the possibility to collect process transparency on a data basis and to analyze it multidimensionally. Within the scope of our internal audit support, we can use process mining at any time if required. We are happy to use the tools you may already be using, but can also draw on our suite of tools (project-specific).

If you are interested and have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.