Internal Audit Control Process

Internal audits are part of the key procedures required by the ISO Standards.  As such they must be completed in full covering all procedures over the period in question.  Thus a schedule of audits is created to control this.  However many of the actions required to be carried out relate to advising people (that they now need to do something), or filing (a report of something that has been done) – and so can be left to the computer.

When this is carried out manually, every step show has to be completed by hand (shown in red in the diagram below).

Where the automated systems are engaged, only the red shaded steps are completed by hand, and the remaining green steps are automatically carried out by the systems.

Of the 14 actions described in the process above, only five of them require the involvement of humans – the other nine can be addressed automatically – saving at least 69% of the activities.  The remaining tasks are ones requiring human intervention as they involve creative value-based judgements that cannot be left to computers.  The rest are basic reporting functions and closed choice activities (eg. The instruction, “file this in this particular file, with its date” has only one solution – whereas “design the best document for our systems” is open to vast range of interpretation).

We can help you set up the process correctly according to the way your organisation wants to work – cutting out tedious filing and email cross checks and ensuring that no tasks get mislaid.  Contact us for more details.