ASG’s Audit and Compliance function is designed to assess an organisation’s compliance to internal bylaws, legislative requirements, international standards and practices, and codes of conduct. The function is responsible for enabling the organisation to follow processes, procedures, and guidelines, as well as ensuring that the organisation is fulfilling external compliance obligations.

After a sustained period of organisational growth, ASG’s Audit and Compliance function needed an upgrade that would transform it into a comprehensive system. The new system needed to solve current issues such as user frustration, data loss, inefficiencies, and human error, that contributed to the audit and compliance process being seen as an arduous and all-consuming task.

By simplifying the legacy audit and compliance process and replacing disparate tools with a comprehensive platform, ASG has changed the way in which ASG conducts and manages audits; significantly reducing the time and resources required, and giving adequate time for stakeholders to collate evidence, review the findings, and implement corrective actions to prevent a recurrence. What’s more, new analytics capabilities assist ASG in monitoring the overall audit performance at various levels such as activity, standard, and overall organisation level. This gives a good micro and macro level understanding of the organisation’s process performance, risks, and opportunities, helping ASG make better business decisions.

The project began in November 2020 and was rolled out in May 2021. It leveraged the internal expertise of 11 internal resources such as SharePoint Developers, Power BI and Data Analysts, and testers, who were led by an ASG Project Manager.

ASG followed a Lean Approach and Deming’s PDCA approach to first simplify the Audit and Compliance process – reducing a 13-step process down to 9. To build the audit and compliance platform, Waterfall Methodology was adopted.

The tool was deployed during the internal audit in 2021. In total, 45 people collaborated during the audit via the platform, compared with only 7 the previous year. 100% of all documents due for review were completed – an improvement of 35% from 2020. 6 projects and 5 accounts were audited. 102 continual improvement opportunities were identified during the process and passed on to the relevant stakeholders to action – this represents an increase in improvement opportunities of nearly 1000%.

Since the rollout of the new process and platform, user feedback has been extremely positive. What was once a “dreaded” process has been described as now being “greatly efficient”, “a valuable improvement” and “an enjoyable learning experience”.

With the foundations of a truly comprehensive Audit and Compliance Framework and platform in place, the Audit and Compliance function is living up to its purpose of enabling the organisation to play its role in achieving compliance, whilst uplifting the value of the function by ‘giving back’ valuable insights to its contributors.

Following the success of this transformation, ASG is currently working to commercialise this solution and service as a new capability offering to take to customers.

For more information visit www.nri-anz.com

*ASG Group changed their name to NRI Australia on 21 February 2023.