Audit and Risk Management Software

Audit and risk management software is a platform designed to help organizations identify, assess, and manage risks, while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. It also streamlines the audit process by enabling teams to plan and schedule their audits in the platform, capture the findings, and report on the results.

By Using the platform to automate tasks such as risk assessments, incident reporting, and compliance tracking, teams can document and manage risks, monitor mitigation efforts, and generate reports in real-time. By centralizing risk and audit data, these software platforms provide insights that help businesses make informed decisions, reduce potential threats, and improve overall governance and compliance processes.

When choosing audit and risk management solutions, firms must consider which staff and teams will be using the platform and the metrics they will need to report on. To enhance your audit and risk management processes, take into account the following considerations when selecting a risk based audit management solution:

• Decide on the method you will use to categorize and rate risks, ensuring a consistent rating system across the enterprise.
• Evaluate whether the risk and audit tool can be tailored to meet your organization’s unique and specific requirements.
• Assess if the risk and audit platform is scalable to accommodate your organization’s growing risk management and audit needs, enabling you to add additional functionality as your GRC processes evolve.
• Review the data privacy and security features of the audit and risk management software, including any supplementary security options to ensure the platform is secure enough.
• Determine whether the risk and audit software supports integrations with other systems and platforms via APIs, enabling a unified source of truth for risk and audit data and real-time risk monitoring of live transactional data to detect emerging risks.
• Consider the intended users of the GRC risk and audit platform, the types and formats of data they will input, and the reports and metrics they need to extract, including their format and frequency and ensure the system can handle those requirements.
• Examine the pricing model of the risk-based audit management software, prioritize platforms with flexible subscription options based on user numbers and module usage to ensure cost-efficiency.
• Look for audit and risk tools that offer extensive reporting capabilities for both leadership teams and regulatory bodies.
• Align your choice of platform with the GRC framework you intend to adopt, ensuring it supports your internal risk and audit objectives.
• Verify that the platform’s enterprise risk management capabilities comply with ISO 31000 best practice guidelines for risk management.
• Ensure the internal audit management software capabilities enable you to map audits to your compliance program for a joined up approach – resulting in better audit outcomes from your audit program.

The benefits of using audit and risk management software include:

• Modern audit and risk management software is highly customizable, allowing you to tailor the platform to your specific needs and preferred terminology.
• Utilizing risk and audit software significantly reduces time spent on risk reporting, data manipulation, and administrative tasks through automation and streamlined workflows.
• GRC tools for risk and audit management provide a centralized view of risk and audit activities across global operations, enabling reporting at both departmental and enterprise levels.
• Risk and audit management platforms empower teams to seamlessly integrate risk management activities and audit tasks into their daily operational roles, generating valuable data to support enterprise decision-making and compliance.
• The automated features in audit risk management solutions lower costs related to risk monitoring, reporting, and internal auditing.
• Risk-based audit management platforms help mitigate risks by enabling the establishment of an active control library – reducing the likelihood of risks, and facilitating regular checks and testing to ensure control effectiveness.
• Risk and audit software simplifies the risk assessment process by allowing staff to conduct online assessments, with results automatically feeding into the platform enabling easy analysis.
• These platforms strengthen Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) by connecting risk management, compliance, audit processes, strategic planning, and operational performance to support integrated risk management (IRM).
• Risk audit software aids in building ERM dashboards, providing actionable insights to optimize operations, reduce risks, achieve strategic objectives, maintain compliance, and successfully complete audits.
• Audit risk management solutions help organizations align their processes with industry and governmental regulations, ensuring regulatory compliance.
• Some risk-based audit platforms also include strategic planning capabilities, enabling organizations to align risk management with their strategic objectives to achieve business goals effectively.
• An audit and risk management software solution can improve health & safety by supporting firms to mitigate risk and operate in line with compliance requirements to pass their internal and external audits.
• External audit software enables you to prove compliance with the relevant regulations and obligations to easily pass your external audits.

Here is a run down of some of the functionality, key features, and types of audit software firms should look for when selecting a top audit and risk management software:

• Opt for audit and risk management software that can be configured by your own users to significantly reduce costly implementation and professional services fees.
• Choose risk and audit software with unlimited risk registers, types, and categories to enable comprehensive risk reporting across specific areas and the entire enterprise.
• Select risk based audit software solutions with multiple customizable reporting outputs to meet your specific operational needs.
• Opt for a risk based audit management solution that integrates with your existing systems and data sources to ensure a single source of truth for all your risk and compliance data.
• Look for reliable risk and audit software that offers numerous top features, including best-practice use cases for compliance, governance, incident reporting, project management, and ESG – allowing you to manage these functions in one platform and integrate the data for better reporting.
• Choose risk based audit management software that provides out-of-the-box operating frameworks to meet regulatory requirements – including ISO standards – to ensure you are compliant and pass any audits relating to these areas.
• Look for an audit risk management solution that works for multiple industries with live demonstrable use cases in your sector. Key industries that benefit from risk and audit tools include highly regulated industries like, healthcare, financial services, gambling & gaming and high-risk industries like, retail, transportation, logistics, oil, gas, energy, water and manufacturing.
• Ensure the platform you select can manage the audit process from end-to-end, ensuring you can plan and schedule your audits, capture the findings and implement remediation actions in one joined up centralized process.
• Look for audit software with action plan management to ensure you can resolve non-conformances quickly for agile audits.
• Look for a risk & audit platform that offers risk reporting for senior leadership to enable risk-aware business decisions.
• Choose solutions that can automate your control testing process to ensure risk remains within tolerable levels.

• When relying on manual processes, risk management and auditing are hindered by poor-quality risk and audit data, often caused by the absence of data governance rules, leading to data entry errors and incomplete information.
• Storing risk and audit data in various formats and spreadsheets introduces issues like copy-and-paste mistakes, overwritten data, and missing fields.
• Disconnected spreadsheets housing disparate risk and audit data result in substandard data quality and an unclear risk framework, producing inaccurate reports that can misinform decision-making.
• Manual processes lacking automation delay the resolution of risk events, increasing the likelihood of risks escalating to unacceptable levels.
• Siloed processes and fragmented data sources make it challenging to connect risks with the relevant controls, policies, and audits, obscuring their interdependencies.
• Large organizations face difficulties in comparing risks across multiple locations due to inconsistent risk frameworks and isolated data, complicating the ability to make informed, risk-based decisions across departments and sites.

• Data Migration – Importing existing GRC data into a new audit and risk management tool can be challenging if the data quality is poor. Clean and organize your data beforehand to ensure only high-quality, accurate information with properly formatted and complete fields is imported.
• Cultural Resilience – Comprehensive training is crucial for the successful adoption of risk and audit tools. Proper training ensures users input accurate data, contributing to high-quality risk information that supports data-driven decision-making.
• User Adoption – Training is key to ensure the risk & audit tool is adopted and widely used – this will ensure users are entering accurate information – providing top quality risk data to support data-driven decision-making.
• Security & Privacy – Involve your IT team during the procurement process to address security concerns. Choose software certified to standards such as ISO 27001, SOC Type 1 & 2, and Cyber Essentials for robust security assurance. Ensure the platform includes access controls and user permissions to protect sensitive data.
• Integration with other Systems – Audit and risk management tools often need to integrate with existing systems and data sources to monitor risk levels in real time. Look for platforms with API libraries and proven integration capabilities to support both current and future requirements.
• Cost – While audit and risk tools may cost more than manual processes like spreadsheets, highlight their potential for generating cost savings and efficiency gains in your business case to justify the investment.