As data continues to pile up, agile methodologies are the new “trend” in auditing, but what is agile auditing and what does it have to do with your auditing process?
Agile Methodology
At the heart of agile methodology is communication and flexibility with clients and among teams. In fact, this concept was created in direct response to more traditional “waterfall” management styles that slowed down processes and hampered quick and effective communication. There’s even an Agile Manifesto that has been widely used as a basis for developing agile structures.
In action, agile encourages regular communication between developers and their clients. The idea is that teams work in short sprints instead of marathons when developing a software product, offering constant deliverables to their clients so they can incorporate client feedback into their next sprint. This cycle puts client satisfaction at the forefront of the development process.
There are many different iterations of agile methodology, the most popular being Scrum and Kanban. All of these methods have the same main ideas in mind: communication and client satisfaction. Check out advantages and disadvantages of the top 5 Agile methodologies here.
Agile Auditing
While it is obvious that a focus on collaboration and client satisfaction works great for managing a team, you might be wondering what agile methodology has to do with your audit process. The goal here is to create an agile auditing process that manages risk continuously, instead of having to backtrack and retrace phantom steps.
Agile methodology gives more direction to an audit and leads to more effective sampling. By implementing a system that can monitor risk in all transactions, past and present, you can get used to regular deliverables that point directly to your organization’s problem areas. This prevents those shots in the dark that take up time and resources for little to no results.
Agile auditing can take the marathon of combing through random data samples to find discrepancies, and turn it into a cakewalk. Using internal audit automation tools, agile auditing can flag the areas that need your attention and save you the headache of trying to find them.
Agile Auditing With 9b
9b offers a suite of agile auditing intelligence tools that are customizable to your organization’s auditing needs. We can use the data from your existing system to quickly determine the transactions that need review. We can even go so far as determining employees that are racking up red flags and making suggestions on who needs training.
9b’s Agile approach to the auditing process can alleviate the uncertainty of what unnecessary costs or shady activities are hiding in your organization’s data. Our internal audit automation tools and our expert developers can accomplish what would take months of data review in a couple of weeks, saving you time and resources. Plus, as an Agile team ourselves, we will be in close communication with you about your needs along the way.
How would you like to be the auditor that brings transparency and efficiency to your organization quickly and inexpensively?
Schedule a demo with us or Learn more about 9b audit intelligence
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