Medical research firm unlocks powerful, automated Workday auditing
This industry-leading US non-profit medical research organisation – tasked with biomedical and scientific education – holds its people at its core, promoting a culture of encouragement and empowerment for all. Describing their 2000-strong workforce as passionate, authentic, and innovative, they are a team who are helping to shape the future of science.
An innovative transformation
Supporting its people and maximising investment is top priority for this organisation so, when a new HR system was required, Workday was the only solution that met all these needs. The firm implemented a full suite of modules and now leverages Workday’s full platform to mobilise its HR and Finance functions to meet philanthropic business objectives.
Despite these new efficiencies, gaps began to emerge in audit and compliance knowledge, causing issues when auditing its financial and compliance controls, which is vital for this non-profit operating in a highly-regulated sector.
Lack of expertise increases complex challenges
With limited capacity, the organisation struggled to increase their overall audit capability, particularly struggling with Segregation of Duties (SOD). Their Head of Systems explains, “Not only was extracting and safely storing Segregation of Duties data an effort-laden, time-consuming manual exercise, but even getting to the data itself was a complex journey that called for a highly specialised skillset.”
The team, were spending a large portion of their time on auditing and becoming increasingly reliant on external consultants to perform an SoD analysis, with high-value initiatives being put on hold as a result. “We found that working with external consultants wasn’t as valuable as we’d hoped. They were only able to provide a ‘point in time’ analysis, that essentially became obsolete the moment the data was extracted from the system,” he adds.
Manual auditing falls short
With a view to achieving effective SoD auditing, the firm spent a significant period of time reviewing how SoD was incorporated into its key business processes and analysing what security groups had access to in the system.
He continues, “Our team manually reviewed the access assigned to specific users to identify anyone with conflicting security, or excessive access. For example, if a user had treasury roles and accounting roles, it was an obvious red flag, and also payroll and Accounts Payable roles. While this analysis provided data and insight which was valuable to us, it was a thoroughly manual process that took some time.”
Compliance confidence with Smart Audit
The organisation’s top priority was understanding how it could continue to increase overall audit capability while reducing the amount of time it took to ensure success. Searching for a solution, the firm explored options available in the market.
Their Head of Systems describes, “After exploring the market for options, the team began a conversation with Kainos. They truly understand Workday, which gives them a unique perspective when designing SoD checks. This ultimately developed into a strategic partnership with the introduction of Smart Audit—an automated risk management platform that provides a simpler and more efficient way to audit Workday."
"Smart Audit demonstrated immediate value, enabling us to weed out false positives by triangulating BP Policy, BP Definition, and Advanced Routing restrictions to make accurate risk assessments. Comparing this to previous efforts, it was a huge time saver for the team."
Maximum compliance, minimum effort
“Smart Audit remembers and monitors the status of each finding. So each incremental run would be compared to the previous run – making the review/analysis of the results faster and more efficient for our administrators. The team no longer have to look at everything from scratch – Smart Audit surfaces any changes that have occurred since the last run, allowing us to act immediately—identifying and creating exceptions quicker than we ever could manually.”
"Kainos had already spent time identifying common SoD checks and monitoring needs across customers and industries, which meant the checks we needed straight away were ready to go. Within minutes, Smart Audit was connected to our tenant enabling us to immediately assess real-time risk across our Workday environment."
“When it comes to manual versus automated auditing, the results are almost instant. Smart Audit completes the checks in about 15 minutes, instead of weeks of manual work."
Smart Audit has had a huge impact on our organisation, giving us back time to focus on what matters most—monitoring, identifying and preventing risk, not extracting and prepping data in excel.”
A sustainable strategy for the future
With Smart Audit creating efficiencies, improving visibility and ensuring compliance across the business, teams are able to focus on high-value initiatives and other areas of security and delivering value from their Workday investment.
“The team no longer have to look at everything from scratch – Smart Audit surfaces any changes that have occurred since the last run, allowing us to act immediately—identifying and creating exceptions quicker than we ever could manually.”
"Kainos had already spent time identifying common SoD checks and monitoring needs across customers and industries, which meant the checks we needed straight away were ready to go. Within minutes, Smart Audit was connected to our tenant enabling us to immediately assess real-time risk across our Workday environment."
“When it comes to manual versus automated auditing, the results are almost instant. Smart Audit runs through the checks in about 15 minutes – instead of weeks of manual effort, data extraction, data prep by internal teams.”
“For us, Smart Audit has been a beneficial investment. For others seeking to achieve core audit objectives – whether it is protecting the integrity of financials, ensure appropriate and timely access, achieve strong audit outcomes, and continue to adapt to an ever-changing and increasingly complex business landscape – Kainos Smart Audit delivers a reliable solution. It has become a key part of our technology strategy as well as our audit strategy.”