Recently I have been observing a quickly changing landscape of Internal Audit software. We have seen a substantial increase of interest from the market last year and this trend seems to continue in 2016. The increased demand can be broken down into two types of needs: standalone Internal Audit software solutions and integrated Internal Audit with other GRC solutions such as Risk Management and/or Compliance. I think these two approaches are related to two different kinds of visions on how Internal Audit should be organized.
Companies are either focused on GRC integration and reusing data to reduce the burden of compliance and ‘assessment fatigue,’ or the audit function does not want to base the control effectiveness and risk assessment on the outcome of the 2nd line efforts, and wishes to perform their own assessment prior to the audit execution.
At Nasdaq BWise, we support both visions as the BWise platform can be configured to allow data to be shared or ensure strict data segregation. In less mature markets outside Europe and North America, we see more projects being based on integrated GRC as companies often migrate from spreadsheets to applications such as BWise; while in more mature markets, companies are focused on replacing existing point solutions that are outdated or end of life.
More sophisticated software to support Internal Audit processes
Whether they work in an integrated or isolated fashion, Internal Audit teams are now using sophisticated software instead of spreadsheets to support their processes. In a number of countries, regulators are requesting our clients and prospects to improve their Internal Audit software towards functionality such as audit trails, reporting and findings/issues follow up management. Ladd Muzzy, principal at Nasdaq BWise, recently published a great whitepaper on the changing role of audit.
Ongoing development
We introduced our Internal Audit software in 2009 and in the first few years we have successfully implemented it at many clients with audit teams up to 100 auditors. In 2012, we created the next generation BWise Internal Audit software for a leading global bank that liked our application but wanted to enhance the functionality to ensure it could also be used by very large audit teams and meet their complex requirements as well. We agreed that we would develop to the bank’s requirements and make the new audit application available to all our clients.
So today, I am pleased to say we serve large international companies with 1,000+ Internal Audit teams operating globally as well as companies with audit teams smaller than 50 auditors. They all have access to the same rich Internal Audit functionalities and smaller teams often make use of the BWise delivery best practice of Rapid Deployment Solutions (RDS). This enables them to implement BWise in weeks rather than months and aligns their current Internal Audit processes with global best practices, which we have developed based on knowledge from numerous implementations based on IIA standards.
With the recent BWise release of SP7 and SP8, we have substantially enhanced the reporting capabilities as well as the user experience which – to my expectation – will further solidify our position as the global leader in Internal Audit solutions.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
