Situation
The Internal Audit team was experiencing significant coordination, communication, and productivity challenges caused by spreadsheet-based manual processes used to plan and track audit projects, resource availability, and scheduling. For three consecutive quarters, the Audit Committee was surprised by execution misses driven by poor visibility into resource capacity and project completion.
Day-to-day execution required excessive emails and meetings to resolve coordination issues between teams and leadership. There was no mobile capability, schedule changes were often delayed or inaccurate, and the team grew increasingly frustrated. Real-time reporting on team and project performance was limited and unreliable.
Obstacles
The existing audit software did not support detailed, real-time views of frequently changing resource availability or project schedules at both phase and project levels. It also failed to automatically identify delayed projects or enable efficient in-platform communication across teams.
Reporting capabilities were inadequate, data was frequently outdated, and the overall process was inefficient. Long-standing reliance on spreadsheets, email, and recurring meetings made it difficult to stay aligned with the Annual Plan. There was no real-time or mobile visibility, including on smartphones.
Action Taken
- Evaluated Audit Prodigy’s project and resource management capabilities to address Internal Audit’s productivity and real-time visibility challenges.
- Audit Prodigy became a Certified Technology Partner with RSA Archer in February 2019, enabling seamless data flows between platforms.
- Implemented a two-way data flow between RSA Archer and Audit Prodigy while retaining essential data within RSA Archer.
- Implemented Single Sign-On (SSO) using ADFS to integrate team resources.
- Received one-hour team training from Audit Prodigy and collaborated to rapidly build custom features, reports, and dashboards.
- Post-integration, worked with Audit Prodigy to deliver additional enhancements based on team and leadership feedback.
Results
- Team Adoption: Rapid adoption of new capabilities including schedule planning, real-time changes, exception notifications, and project and phase tracking, all accessible on mobile.
- Distributed Project Management: Project management responsibilities expanded to five managers, including three international managers, instead of being limited to two U.S.-based managers.
- Management Reporting: Streamlined dashboards and reports reduced review meeting time and shifted focus to exceptions, while enabling tracking of manager execution performance.
- Improved Delivery: Completed six additional projects, representing an 8% increase above the Annual Plan in Q2 2020.
- Cost Optimization: Reduced consultant spend by 5% year-over-year in Q2 2020 while increasing budget allocation efficiency for 2020.
