Internal audit functions are essential to good business because the right auditing system and team can save money, find your business blind spots and provide much needed perspective. But a STRATEGIC Audit Plan is critical to using your audit team for the best results.
Like any other part of a business, your internal auditing group needs to put in place a short and long term plan that can meet your needs.
It starts with a close look at the expectations for the audit function and is followed by a clear and concise statement of your mission for audit activities. Sound familiar? That’s because the process for setting up a Strategic Audit Plan runs parallel to any other business initiative.
Your Strategic Audit Plan centers around six key areas:
Financial: A strategic plan looks at the audit function not just for this year or this assessment, but for 3-5 years, so a long term budget to ensure funding for the mission is essential.
Leadership: From report process to leading the team through all aspects of the audit assignments, a strategic plan examines the management responsibility and establishes appropriate long term plans for continuity in leadership.
Communications: Starting with the executive summary, moving to communicating the plan with those who will execute it, and including a communications protocol for reporting, a strategic plan ensures communication is covered and allows an appropriate flow of information.
Risk Assessment: All audits report risk assessment, but a strategic plan examines risk across all areas of the business, prioritizes them, and has a spot on consistent system for long term assessment.
Measurement: How do you know when your audit function has succeeded? A strategic plan has established measurement criteria, objective and subjective, to know when there is a successful process.
Resource Management: Critical to long term strategic plan is the use of resources, human and technical. When you’re doing it right, long term technical needs and skill sets are identified, and those that aren’t readily available internally are both developed for the long term and searched out externally.
Contact customerservice@lourdesgant.com for more information on putting a Strategic Audit Plan in place in your business.