Products & Solutions / Governance, Risk, & Compliance

GRC – Audit

Enable internal audit functions to provide education, assurance and insight beyond annual auditing plans

In the wake of large corporate performance disasters, the financial crisis and subsequent reforms, corporate boards of directors (BODs) have come under growing scrutiny and are being held accountable for their oversight responsibilities. BODs, in turn, are relying more heavily on internal audit departments to ensure that corporate systems are functioning to protect them from the types of scandal, fraud and misrepresentation that have damaged many companies over the past decade. As a result, these departments are undergoing a quick transformation from their traditional role as backward-looking investigators into a process-oriented, forward-looking group with international perspective that can provide education, assurance and insight beyond their traditional annual auditing plans.

" As regulations and the associated audits increase, internal audit organizations are challenged to maintain productivity. They look for a platform to enable them to more effectively manage work papers, plan and schedule audits, manage audit resources, and improve the ability to work effectively with other business units, risk management and compliance organizations, and external auditors."

— Gartner Inc.

Critical Capabilities of Enterprise GRC Platform Vendors, French Caldwell, Nov. 30, 2010

How SAS® Can Help

Internal audit departments must use automated, well-defined, controlled and documented procedures to assess the adequacy of internal controls, quickly detect and report all violations, and ensure that business units take timely and appropriate corrective actions when the need arises. With SAS, you can:

  • Support a true risk-based approach to internal auditing by tightly integrating continuous control monitoring abilities with audit planning and execution features.
  • Measure performance across the enterprise and identify variances by product, region, channel and program by building a dynamic model of the audit universe as it really exists today and keeping track of all the moving parts with historical accuracy.
  • Ensure that new data is captured, vetted and used to drive appropriate actions by enabling two-way communication between fieldwork and a secure central library of all audit programs, templated practices, workflows and standards.
  • Save valuable auditor time while achieving broader coverage of your auditing universe and filling in "blind spots" by conducting tests and managing all auditing, assurance and compliance-related activities in one system.

How SAS® Is Different

Only SAS provides a fully integrated enterprise GRC tool that smoothly connects all elements of audit planning to audit execution, finalization and reporting. No other vendor delivers greater feature depth and breadth in a logical, integrated and project-based environment, making the SAS solution stand out as the tool of choice for internal auditing departments of midsized companies up to the largest and most complex global enterprises. With SAS, you get:

  • A common repository for all critical GRC components (risks, controls, policies, audits, etc.) that lets you easily build a reliable view of your risk exposures and compliance obligations, and facilitate collaboration among various GRC teams.
  • The ability to link all critical GRC elements so you can easily assess the impact that decisions made in one part of the organization will have on other parts, so you can make critical decisions in short time frames.
  • Software that can be configured easily to align with your organization's framework and methodologies, so there's no need to change your GRC functions to match SAS functionality.
  • Automated processes, such as control testing and monitoring of key risk indicators, risk exposures, loss event trends, etc., for improved efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Extensive dashboard and reporting capabilities that lower the costs of generating and distributing GRC-related reports across the organization.
  • A scalable architecture that lets you start small and increase your usage in a modular approach as your needs grow and change.

Related Products and Solutions

  • SAS Enterprise GRC – SAS Enterprise GRC strengthens governance and trust with systematic management of risk. It detects and helps prevent violations, allowing you to align strategy with risk appetite. The solution builds a reliable view of risk compliance, facilitates collaboration between GRC teams and reduces the cost of risk management through automation.

Ready to learn more?

Call us at 1-800-727-0025 (US and Canada) or request more information.