Sword Audit ManagerYour solution to effective Audit and Assurance

Streamline the audit process, react to ever-changing priorities, produce better results, and reduce time to value.

In these uncertain times, Internal Audit, like any other key business function needs to be able to react quickly to changing circumstances and the needs of the business. As business considers changing the way it operates, so must Internal Audit if it is to provide the service that its’ stakeholders require.

More and more is now expected from audit. Shareholders are demanding a strategic focus from their internal audit function, and audit is expected to become more forward looking and help anticipate risks. To do this, audit needs to be able to adapt and deliver at a faster pace, while still maintaining its’ standards and quality.

Sword Audit Manager delivers a truly flexible solution for the effective management of the Audit team, whatever its’ size, location or approach, enhancing your audit process, improving efficiency, standardization and communication, thus ensuring that Audit can be seen to add value to the business.

Intuitive Easy to use system which evolves and grows with you

Individual Out of the box functionality that is configurable to meet your organization and users’ exact needs

Innovative Supports and enhances your audit process, increases efficiency and profile, and adds value to the business

International Supports compliance with the Performance Standards as set out in the International Professional Practices Framework (IPPF) published by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA)

Integrated A single application with multiple integrated modules

Activity PlanningDevelop strategic plans based on the key requirements of stakeholders using comprehensive analysis and reporting functionality, including risk models and registers.

Quickly and easily adapt audit plans to the changing needs of the business

Greater ability to share plans for comment and feedback from stakeholders

Communicate plan to those that need to know

Supports true risk-based auditing by linking strategic planning, audits and working papers to the risk register

Risk assessment that is consistent with your organization’s strategies and objectives

Regular assessments can be undertaken, and ratings stored, allowing year on year comparisons

Focus on the key risk areas for the business using targeted resources to provide assurance on the adequacy and effectiveness of the risk and control framework

Optimize planning through efficient activity scheduling routines

Intelligence/Horizon ScanningIt is essential that Internal Audit can react quickly not only to changes in stakeholder needs, but also to unforeseen events. Sword Audit Manager allows you to analyze trends, and to look ahead to identify emerging issues that could affect your business and require audit involvement.

Allows intelligence to be logged or informed either through internal horizon scanning or by the business

Identify key events and areas through risk assessment of the intelligence received, using flexible and configurable parameters

Easy inclusion of high-risk intelligence directly into audit plans

Gain a view across the business through the analysis of trends and themes in intelligence received

Detailed Tracking of ActivitiesIncrease oversight and effectively manage the audit process by using real time information to quickly identify what people are working on and their progress through those activities.

See the full scope of the audit teams’ activities in areas such as compliance reviews, investigations, consultancy, projects and administrative functions.

Agile and flexible enough to be adapted as necessary to suit the approach needed when planning all activities

Work can be split into stages with progress against each stage being closely monitored

Keep audits on track by monitoring completion of key audit milestones

Ensure achievement of agreed targets such as resource budgets and completion against plan

Real time information available to managers through dashboards and reporting

Keep key stakeholders informed through regular performance reports

Correspondence can be produced using your own templates, for discussion and agreement with auditees

Resource ManagementEasily identify and optimize the most efficient and effective use of resources to achieve the audit plan. The streamlined resource management allows you to instantly make changes to the allocation of resources as needs arise and priorities change.

Assist with strategic planning and work allocation using optional staff budgeting and tracking

Simple and clear visualization of resourcing through the Gantt chart helps to quickly identify overloaded resources

Real-time information on achievement of resource budgets for all activities as well as analysis of time and variances by team, person, activity, task and period through the optional weekly timesheet system

Achieve resource optimization through utilization and forecasting reports

Standardize your audit methodology and process with highly versatile working papers including a wide range of standard and optional working paper types, that can be configured to your needs.

Inform business of any areas that require immediate attention by generating working papers efficiently and directly from business risks and controls.

Increase time to value through library facilities for standardized working papers

Streamline the review and sign-off process through timely generation of review points

Support different types of review such as systems (risk) based, compliance and outcomes testing through a variety of testing working papers

Ensure adherence to and standardize the process through checklists and planning documents

Support the work undertaken through easy upload and management of attachments

Automatic feedback of results to the business

Findings raised from any working paper or directly from the audit

Key themes identified across audits can be captured and reported

Multiple actions can be raised against findings to allow individual tracking

Electronic Working Papers

Save time and gain efficiencies through using standardized templates for the automatic generation of your audit reports including executive summaries, and lists of findings and actions generated from audit working papers.

Where further mitigation is required, actions may be generated for the business to address weaknesses. Comprehensive security is provided to enable online response and tracking by action owners.

Follow the full lifecycle of an action from issue in the audit report through to completion by the business.

Audit Report Generation and Action Tracking

Post Activity SurveysGain feedback from the business on the added value of the audit activity, and identify where future improvements could be made to the service that Audit provides, using post activity questionnaires.

Highly configurable and flexible to meet your organizations needs

Easy online questionnaire completion increases likelihood and speed of response

Increase the value that the audit service provides by quickly analyzing responses to identify areas for improvement

Multiple templates can be used for different report styles

Email alerts are used to notify end users of new, pending, and overdue actions

On-line response pages are available to allow action owners to provide updates to actions

Dashboard alerts and email can be used to inform Audit as soon as actions are implemented by the business

Actions arising out of any review (internal or external) can be imported and managed using the action tracking functionality

Legacy audit actions can easily be imported to facilitate future tracking needs

Extensive reporting options provide information relating to KPIs and action clearance times

Follow-up functionality supports future audit verification work for completed actions

Gather valuable information from the business prior to the audit, using online questionnaires for performing control self-assessments and to request key documentation.

Generate questionnaires for Business Units on a cyclical basis.

Design and store a library of questionnaires for issuing as required.

Select from a range of response types and validation criteria.

Email notifications and reminders to questionnaire respondees.

Analysis of responses including trend reports of responses over periods.

Additional ad-hoc questionnaires to seek views on the control environment, compliance or for any purpose.

Questionnaires

Period Date Range 01/06/2019 to 31/12/2019

Movement from Prior to Current PeriodAnticipated Clearance of Findings

25

20

15

10

5

0Beginning of Period

High Medium Low

Newly Added Cloud End of Period

Dec 19Nov 19Oct 19Sep 19Aug 19Jul 19Dec 19 Not Yet Entered

Findings Movement

High

Beginning of Period

Newly Added

Cloud

End of Period

4

4

6

1

10

2

10

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Medium LowNot Yet Entered

Project Clearance of Findings

Jun-19

Jul-19

Aug-19

Sep-19

Oct-19

Nov-19

Dec-19

2

3

5

1

1

2

1

Overdue 7

Findings Dashboard

Dashboards and Alerts

Immediately see information that is important and relevant through user specific on-screen dashboards configured to meet the needs and role of the user to highlight issues and items for completion and review.

Dashboards are an effective means of both visually highlighting the fine details and at the same time providing high level aggregated view across the organization.

Email alerts can link directly to dashboard items to make sure important events or areas of interest are brought to attention, dealt with

accordingly and not missed.

Multiple dashboards available by user providing clear areas for them to focus on

Real time updates of progress against both annual and activity plans

Lists of items and graphical analyses to bring data to life in the correct format

Quickly drill through from high level graphics down to detailed information

Email alerts that are generated by many different types of events from new action to post audit surveys requiring completion with links to dashboards or directly to the items requiring attention

Reporting

A wide range of standard and custom reporting options to ensure your exact reporting requirements are met and relevant and informative outputs can be produced from the information that you capture and collect. Large catalogue of standard reports are provided out of the box which can either be used as is, or as templates and then tailored to meet your exact requirements.

With direct access to the data we remove the need to manually collate and collect data and streamline the process of compiling reports, which ultimately allows more time for analysis and proactive action.

Consistent and standardized reporting templates ensure that everyone is communicating and sharing information in understandable and consistent corporate formats.

ServicesSword Audit Manager software has been designed to support configuration to meet each

organization’s exact requirements.

Our structured implementation plan is led by experienced consultants and covers:

Understanding your needs

Developing a project plan to meet your priorities and timetable

Workshops with key stakeholders to ensure everyone’s needs are addressed

Configuration of the system to match your methodology and terminology

Administrator training courses to teach you how to further configure the system

Reporting is available through a range of reporting tools and options including:

Multi-component dashboard reports.

Report Generator allows for ad-hoc quick export of data, while drag and drop capability allows flexibility each time items need reviewing.

Export of selected data to MS Excel /MS Word

Many different types of charts for visualization of your data.

Report-writing courses

Super-user and end-user training courses

Post implementation support programmes

Active User Group Meetings to share ideas and help direct the development priorities

SGRC | v3.4 | 18.09.20

www.sword-grc.com info@sword-grc.com

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