TeamMate+ Dimensions helps turn internal audit team into relevant partner
With increased pressure from stakeholders and growing compliance changes, it’s becoming more critical for internal audit to evolve beyond its traditional role to assume a larger leadership position within the organization as a relevant partner.
This was the challenge for a global supplier of high purity materials for the life sciences and advanced technology industries. Already a dynamic, global organization with operations spanning 30 counties, this organization’s internal audit system became even more complex after acquiring an additional corporation in 2017. With internal audit teams based both in the U.S. and India, as well as a co-sourced external audit firm, this acquisition required internal audit to bring different audit processes, practices and data together to more effectively manage its audit universe.
The merger also called attention to internal audit’s need to raise its level of engagement throughout the organization and develop an integrated assurance strategy. Already a TeamMate customer, ongoing discussions with their TeamMate account representative about the need for a combined assurance tool led to the decision that the additional capabilities of TeamMate+, Wolters Kluwer’s fully configurable, web-based audit and assurance management expert solution, better met their long-term goals. The organization implemented TeamMate+ in September 2018.
With TeamMate+, their internal audit department has turned its auditing function into a strategic asset by strengthening its partnerships with stakeholders. Using Dimensions - Wolters Kluwer’s powerful proprietary technology - internal audit can efficiently analyze its work and report to the varying needs of its different constituents. By establishing dimensions (e.g. organizational hierarchy, financial statement accounts or operational processes), internal audit can slice any piece of information, such as a risk, by the lens of the stakeholder for deeper impact. A dimension may also be defined to align with a control framework, such as COSO. According to a Senior Auditor, the Dimensions feature helps internal audit focus on what’s important to their organization. For example:
- The organization’s executives are interested in viewing issues by region to understand their coverage across the world. To quickly access this information, internal audit created a dimension specifically for regions that can be tagged against issues across the organizational hierarchy for monthly reporting to executives.