Getting Started with Continuous Monitoring
As I mentioned in a previous entry here, I’m writing a case study on the continuous monitoring processes at Siemens Financial Services, Inc.
At a high level, this approach involves equipping business process owners with the same technology that some leading-edge internal audit functions use to conduct continuous auditing.
If that appeals to your business process owners, the next question that immediately crops up is: How — and where — do we get started?
I relayed that question to Harald Will, the president and CEO of ACL Services, a supplier of continuous auditing/monitoring technology. Here’s what he suggested:
Purchase-to-payment is one area of the organization where both audit and management have the need to review transactions for anomalies and therefore both approaches add value. Whether checking for supplier fraud, internal fraud, or simple errors, p-to-p is a good place to start, and it usually yields results. The revenue cycle, from orders through to billing and receivables, is another key area that often reveals immediate issues when transactions are monitored. ###
July 16th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
One of the best internal controls to combat fraud is segregation of duties. By automating the AP process through workflow, duties can be segregated in a continuous fashion.
With AP automation that includes a robust workflow engine, you should have complete end-to-end AP process visibility as the invoice transitions from one step to the next … the AP system should track all changes maintaining a comprehensive audit trail of what was performed and by whom for all prior steps so potential conflicts can automatically be caught at the transaction-level.
More here:
http://blog.170systems.com/bid/8359/Segregation-of-AP-Duties-What-s-the-Best-Approach
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