Are your quality and audit team ready for the digital shift? Do they have the right mindset? The tools are there is it time to assess which ones are right for your organisation.
Audit is far from a “Tick -the-box” exercise, a necessary, often manual, point-in-time snapshot of compliance, with clipboard in hand.
The rapid advancement of digital technologies is impacting on the auditing profession and the internal auditors carrying out their own self-inspections.
Manual audit processes which rely on a sampling process which may be hampered by time constraints and the audit findings themselves when auditor explain their findings to the auditees. In this sampling style audit a small percentage of the data available is reviewed and there is a hope that it is representative.
By using data analytics and automated extraction tools, auditors can now analyse 100% of a dataset. This “full-population testing” eliminates the risk of missing a needle in a haystack. Instead of guessing based on a sample, auditors can identify trends, and anomaly across the entire operation. Embracing the digital tools available will allow auditors to improve accuracy and scope of their audits while making efficiencies whilst at the same time identifying patterns and trends.
A traditional audit tells you what happened last week or last year and is reactive and looking for root causes. Digital transformations can facilitate the flow of data directly into an audit dashboard in real time to a proactive approach to identify process drifts prior to the development of non-conformance.
The advancements in remote auditing and the tools available has allowed for more audits to be carried out with a lower cost. As AI takes over the “grunt work” of data verification and document checking, the auditor’s role must evolve , in addition to a deep knowledge of the Regulations and standards they must be able to interpret complex data patterns, embrace it with deep ethical scepticism and provide management with insights that drive business improvement and excellence, not just compliance and past mistakes.