For many years, we have been encouraging our clients to utilize policyIQ for all aspects of their compliance programs – from the assessment of risk through the remediation of issues. However, during a recent conversation with long-time client, Travis Heyer (Director of Internal Audit at Great Lakes Dredge and Dock), we realized that we had not yet clearly illustrated in a live training session how to effectively request and capture audit evidence within policyIQ.
Travis graciously agreed to work with us to create a training session – and brought his colleague, Amit Patel (Senior Auditor) along with him. On Thursday, March 31, we presented this session to a large number of very active participants. (You can check out the recording of the session, or download the slides for a quick overview.)
It’s really all about saving time
Automating the requests for audit evidence can allow your internal audit team to…
- Avoid playing “Match the evidence to the request!”
- Minimize risk of using an old version of a file
- Waste time sending annoying follow-ups
- Secure documentation more effectively
It comes down to a huge time savings, freeing up internal audit resources to do the real, value-add work that your organization needs.
Pages or Forms?
While the training presentation focused on an evidence collection process in policyIQ pages, a similar process can be built within policyIQ forms.
Pages offer the advantage of a two-way link between the Evidence Request and the Test page, so that your internal auditors can simply leave the files attached to the Evidence Request. Pages also allow more than one individual user to contribute directly to the same Request. However, utilizing Pages requires that all users who participate in the process of providing evidence are Advanced Users, a more expensive license in policyIQ.
Forms offer their own advantages, allowing for a simple issuing and follow-up process. However, the link between the Evidence Request form and the Test page is less visible. Evidence files will need to be downloaded and re-uploaded to the Test page by the auditor. The significant advantage of the Forms process is that any individual providing evidence needs only to have a Standard User license, a less expensive license that can keep costs low!
Getting started in 5 easy steps
Our training session focused on how to get started in just five easy steps:
- Create Evidence Request template
- Build list of evidence in Excel
- Import evidence request list
- Assign requests
- Track progress and follow-up
We encourage you to check out the recording or the slides for more details on these steps – and reach out to us to help you to get your bearings and get started!