Formulating a Plan
As with any good planning, the internal audit team began by asking key questions:
- Where would the company be in five years?
- What competencies and scale were needed to maintain the high level of service while also being sensitive to costs?
- How should the team divide themselves geographically, given the company's growth?
The internal audit team wanted to strategically support the growth and development of the company using technology to enhance its capabilities. They had seen other departments within the organization successfully implement LogicGate’s Risk Cloud platform to centralize data, streamline communications, and strengthen analytics capabilities, but they faced unique challenges.
Their process was manually intensive, and although they saw opportunities in digital innovation and data mining, they didn’t know what data was available or how to access it. Further, they lacked the analytics capabilities to apply the data and empower businesses. They also worried about the growing number of cybersecurity incidents making headlines. Eventually, they decided they needed a plan. Not just for the following year, but the subsequent five years.
A longer-term view would position them to capture opportunities in internal audit, within the organization more broadly, and throughout the industry as a whole. Ultimately, they formulated a guiding vision, "Our strategic opportunity lies in continuously increasing efficiency by leveraging technology while maintaining our role as a trusted business advisor."