Assurance best practice – How we can help

As some food for thought, here are a number of ways we can and do regularly help organisations to get the most out of their corporate assurance functions.

Build a shared vision

  1. Get your audit committee humming [more]
  2. Get your stakeholders aligned
  3. Identify and/or achieve your stretch goals for beyond business as usual
  4. Get your team focused
  5. Measure, recognise and reward the right results

Know your strengths and opportunities

  1. Benchmark your function
  2. Benchmark your practices
  3. Business case for resourcing
  4. Identify areas for cost saving
  5. Develop a quality assurance and improvement program (QAIP)

Target the right areas

  1. Make hindsight one of your offers, not the only thing on the menu
  2. Identify emerging material risks, identify your blind spots in your risk profile and develop genuine foresight [more]
  3. Focus on the right risks with the right audits 
  4. Integrate reviews for to provide greater insight
  5. Build relevant audit heat maps focus on risk of process failure [more]
  6. Know when to go broad, when to do deep and when to do both

Optimise your delivery and cycle times

  1. Streamline your methodology
  2. Streamline and embed file quality
  3. Develop and deploy an efficient quality assurance process
  4. Reduce audit cycle time
  5. Reduce report cycle time and investment
  6. Build 2nd line of defence functions
  7. Build a case for and implement combined assurance plans
  8. Implement control self assessment

Get the most out of your people

  1. Shared vision
  2. Streamlined approach
  3. Get the most out of your service providers and suppliers [more]
  4. Working with specialists for peak outcomes and value for money
  5. Getting the most out of guest auditors and secondees
  6. Building your internal reputation within your organisation
  7. Advanced 1:1 coaching and mentoring for your highest potential people [more]
  8. The Virtual Chief Auditor / Chief Risk Officer

Use technology effectively

  1. Understand the various technology options available and when to use them [more]
  2. Know when to buy, build, configure or do work arounds
  3. Get the most out of existing technology
  4. Choose the right solutions
  5. Do more with less

Extend your team with virtual support

  1. The Virtual Chief Auditor / Chief Risk Officer
  2. Interim Chief Auditor / Chief Risk Officer
  3. Specialist reviews and skills
  4. Your own personalised innovation and improvement team

If you would like to find out more about what we do, who we’ve done it with and what happened, please subscribe to the Davies Report or contact us for a copy of our detailed capability statement and case studies.