A simple tactic to more impactful audits

Usually, Internal Audits focus on a department, process, region or a system - say procurement or Commissions for example. These are?independent silos and are typically managed by one individual.?

But in the larger scheme of things, the silo in question is not truly a silo - it receives inputs from other departments or process owners. And similarly, the output from the silo is used by other teams. An interesting tactic is to look at the end-to-end picture (or rather cover multiple silos). It is a smart way to identify some unique risks.

Analyzing such cross functional data covering multiple silos helps identify control gaps and possibly fraud scenarios no one had considered previously. It also provides a great amount of data to analyze which might lead to some very interesting insights.

Say for example, if along with standalone Procurement data analytics, an analysis is also performed on the receipt of goods, its consumption, or the manner in which the requisition is initiated and need is identified, budget is managed an controls around these activities etc. there is always the possibility of coming up with some interesting insights.

This may require a revision of the scope. But in order to make the audit findings impactful, crossing the periphery may be impactful. Any such exploratory analysis will be well worth the effort.