Audit Analysis: Know Why It is Important?

Audit analysis is all about paying attention to the quality of data collected to make better and informed business decisions. It is undoubtedly a critical component of your quality management process to identify the critical areas of improvement and maintain business operational excellence.

For many organizations, audit analysis is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task. It might be due to a lack of awareness about the next generation audit management systems that have made audit-related tasks simpler, reducing the overall process cycle time.

What is Audit Analysis?

Audit analysis refers to analyzing the quality data sets collected in the organization, reflecting their on-going processes to identify inconsistencies and trends for detailed investigation of the quality issues. It also provides audit evidence against the deviations identified.

An audit analysis can be beneficial for auditors and decision-makers because it helps them perform:

1. Better resource and process planning 
2. Better risk assessments
3. Audit sampling to collect better audit evidence

Also, an enterprise can significantly improve their communication with the customers, suppliers, and stakeholders when they have more clarity of the system’s inconsistencies.

Despite so many advantages, enterprises are not upgrading to better means of analyzing audits, such as audit management software that provides more accurate and efficient results. In addition to having a robust software, three areas that must be addressed for performing audit analysis flawlessly are:

1. Data Management and Accessibility
2. Control of Audit Processes
3. Collaboration and Sustainability

Data Management and Accessibility

For effective data management and accessibility, you must have seamless security in place, an understanding of organizational best-practices, and access to excessive data volumes. However, these are the critical challenges for many organizations; creating and maintaining an audit data repository is undoubtedly the most effective yet common solution. The storage shall consist of sub-sets of enterprise data, demonstrating that the data is required solely for audit purposes. 

You can create the data repository in a secure server environment, which is subject to enterprise standards for data security and management like a cloud environment. Developing and maintaining an “intelligent” database on a centralized platform is another excellent solution for auditors to present their data elements, reflecting their purpose and significance.

When the audit database is maintained in a secure server environment, it ensures data integrity and effective management. It allows you to process large data volumes of data efficiently and systematically. Cloud-based audit management solutions are highly recommended to create a safe data repository while leveraging the simplified audit analysis workflow.

Control of Audit Processes

The effective quality solutions are the one that constitutes standard test and procedures, and the best audit process controls. In a centralized environment, enterprises can create their procedures and checklists for the audit analysis while making them accessible for documentation and evidence. Maintaining control of the audit process can be best acquired in a centralized platform, primarily when using a cloud-based audit management solution.

Instead, it is the most effective way to track and reconcile the audit-related data, which can be readily accessed for reviews and inspections. With advanced software, you can gain better control of audit data by utilizing advanced security controls.

Collaboration and Sustainability

Audit analysis can be more effective when considering it as a fundamental part of your audit planning and strategy, ensuring its utilization for improved collaboration, sharing knowledge, and establishing repeatable processes. 

Letting technical specialists create and maintain test procedures won’t alone be helpful. You need to record and keep all the policies, practices, and other critical documents on a centralized platform, secure and can be independently accessed by your team members and auditor without any technical training. With a centralized approach, you can ensure the processing of large data volumes with utmost efficiency and minimum downtime. 

Additionally, you can easily integrated audit analysis procedures with the data and processes using powerful audit software. It further enables auditors to perform regular audits smoothly without any hassles of decentralized data. Though your team might require training on the use of technological solutions for managing end-to-end audits, their productivity is likely to increase with the combination of technological advancement for audit analysis and industry best practices. And the best part about the use of technology is gaining more sustainability altogether.

Related Article : Drive Continuous Improvement by Analyzing Audit Findings

The post implies that audit software can help create a big difference in managing your audit data and related tasks in terms of efficiency, consistency, and sustainability. Therefore, you must get reliable audit management software for your team.

However, you cannot implement just any audit management software. It requires you to perform good market research to understand the varying functionalities and features that such software offers. And, then you can select the one that suits your requirements.

It sounds like too much work, right?

Not really. Here’s a quick recommendation for you – Qualityze Audit Management Software. Built on the most powerful and secure cloud platform, i.e., Salesforce.com, Qualityze Audit Management manages compliance and risk with end-to-end process management of internal and external audits. It ensures effective and timely audits to improve product quality and safety while ensuring compliance. Qualityze Audit Management enables organizations to:

• Implement Best-Practice Audit Planning

• Improve Audit Efficiency and Reduce Cost

• Manage Audit Findings Effectively

• Drive Continuous Improvement

• Enhance Visibility of Audit Results

Related Article: Construction Quality Management: Everything You Should Know

Audit Analysis Done, What Next?

Well, the real work starts here.

Once the audit analysis is done, you get to know the inconsistencies and trends in the system that require immediate attention for quality improvements in the product and processes. The audit analysis keeps the quality management process cycle up and running by highlighting the key areas. That’s why audits are critical to foster a culture of continuous improvements in an organization. 

You can utilize an integrated quality management solution and the audit software to process data and change requirements more efficiently. 

Is Audit Management Software Really Worth?

Yes! Audit management software has become the need of the modern work environment. It accelerates the audit cycles while answering all the questions like:

1. What are the real issues?
2. How will these issues impact the overall quality?
3. What are the root causes of the problems identified?
4. What would be an effective solution for the same?

Some other benefits of using a compliance-ready Audit Management Software are: (i)It helps you reduce the repetition of efforts and saves time. (ii)It improves data accuracy, which is captured during an audit program. (iii)It helps you to gather more information with every audit. (iv)It eliminates errors in audit reports. (v)It also demonstrates compliance with audit trail details.

Conclusion

Audit analysis plays a critical role in your quality management process by helping you identify the key improvement areas. But, don’t let it take up most of your auditor’s time when you can implement a robust audit management software and make audits a real quick job to do. It won’t be wrong to say that cloud-based audit management solution is the next-generation solution enterprises need for efficient and accurate audit analysis.

If you want to know how audit management software makes audit analysis a simpler job for you, get in touch with us on 1-877-207-8616 or write to us at info@qualityze.com and our customer success team will be right there for you. You can also request for a free demo right now.