Smart Audit improves internal audit efficiency with automated, risk-based approach for global non-profit
100s
177+
Daily
Smart Audit enables Compliance, Finance and HR teams to see that everything is working as expected. The stress this will remove during the next audit cannot be underestimated. You can’t put a value on reassurance, especially in government.
About the organisation
Headquarted in California, US, this non-profit policy think tank offers research and analysis to organisations globally including government agencies, foundations, educational establishments and private-sector firms. They are situated in more than 50 countries across North America, Europe and Australia.
Migrating to Workday to match pace of continued business growth
In 2019 the organisation decided it wanted to move from its on-premise ERP system to a more scalable, flexible and cost-efficient solution in the Cloud. It looked at several options, including the SaaS capability of its existing ERP provider. However, it was Workday which came out on top due to its superior Cloud offering.
A Senior Workday Finance Business Developer at the organisation explains, “The current provider didn’t have a specific Cloud solution for non-profit government organisations, so it was going to have to be very customised and a lot of work for the team. Workday already had good success in this space and that was a big factor for us. Workday was also seen as the “best of breed” Cloud solution and was praised as a very robust tool. So, in the end it was an easy decision for us to make.”
The organisation went live in 2020 with Workday HCM, Payroll and Finance, and has more recently added Workday Extend.
The Challenge: Preparing for the first Workday audit
The non-profit is primarily sponsored by US government agencies, as well as US state and local governments. It is therefore heavily regulated, undergoing intensive government audit programs. As the organisation transitioned to Workday, their external audit was postponed to allow for implementation and bedding in of the new system.
When the Senior Workday Finance Business Developer joined the organisation in 2021, the race was on to be ready for its first Workday audit: “The amount of work we needed to do was tremendous. I was on course to spend 60 hours a week for over two months to prepare for the first audit, and that was with additional support from team members that knew the system through and through, plus an external agency to assist us.
“We needed assurance about our SOD, controls and even clarity on where our security risks were so we could say how we were going to fix them. It would have been extensive and complicated to develop custom reports. Overall, it was going to be a massive undertaking to manually prepare in time.”
The non-profit was also aware of the challenges of waiting until ‘audit time’ to look at compliance controls, particularly the fact that checks were on a static date.
The Senior Workday Finance Business Developer explains: “With an audit, evidence gathered is always just a snapshot of time. If the auditors did their research for March 31st and something happened on April 1st, then we wouldn’t know about it until it was potentially too late. We didn’t want to be in a position where we were finding issues after the fact, and as an organisation we wanted to have a more birds-eye view of our risks.”
The Solution: Smart Audit turns months of audit prep into days
The Senior Workday Finance Business Developer had used Smart Audit at a previous company and knew the solution would be of huge benefit to the team at the global non-profit. He explains: “Having worked with Kainos before, I knew what was possible with Smart Audit and the assurance it would bring to the organisation. I kept saying to the team, “If we don’t have this tool, it’s impossible to say we’re covered.”
Upon seeing the solution in action, the decision to employ Smart Audit was made quickly by the wider organisation, and the platform was up and running within a matter of weeks.
“Once we got Smart Audit, within a short space of time – we’re talking days - we were able to prove to the auditors that we understood our risks. That, yes, we do have risks but we know about them and we can easily prioritise, remediate or accept them. That’s what the auditors wanted – they wanted to see understanding and control.”
He continued: “What was funny was that this was the auditor’s first time auditing Workday! Yes, that did have its pros and cons; Smart Audit made it easy. We were able to say, “here’s everything you need to know!”
The Results: Achieving the ‘impossible feat’ of daily checks through automation
The Workday team had ambitions to have a more consistent view of risks, particularly around financial accounting. The Senior Workday Finance Business Developer explains, “SoD was one of the catalysts for our decision to purchase Smart Audit. Our funding is very regulated, down to the very cent, so we had to be sure that any potential risks could not be exploited.
“Upon employing Smart Audit, 177 SoD risks were flagged. That was astonishing and would have taken a long time to find manually. We knew instantly that we’d made the right decision.
“The result is that we have now been able to get those risks under control and have an ongoing real-time view of challenges. You would need a full-time person checking every day but even then, achieving the same amount of coverage would be impossible as they’d need to check multiple tenants at the same time.”
As the global non-profit successfully finishes its first Workday government audit, the Senior Workday Finance Business Developer says, “For me, this tool is invaluable. It’s enabling Compliance, Finance and HR teams to see that everything is working as expected. The stress this will remove during the next audit cannot be underestimated. You can’t put a value on reassurance, especially in government.”