CFO Magazine's June issue has a feature story on 24 x 7 continuous auditing approach that has been implemented at several organizations, including Harrah's, Siemen's Financial Services, and British Columbia's Ministry of Finance. Interestingly, the article is filed in CFO's "Technology" section and emphasizes the IT component of the respective initiatives.
Those of you who have met my partner Kim Jones or me know that we believe that technology is only part of any continuous auditing or continuous controls monitoring for transactions (CCM-T) initiative. I found that point reinforced by the first comment on the CFO.com article, about Monitoring still being a detective, and not a preventive control. At Visual Risk IQ, we believe that process is key. By designing a process (i.e. review of P-Card or Accounts Payable transactions) with sufficient time lag between resolution of CCM-T exceptions and PRIOR TO PAYMENT, such the monitoring activity actually becomes a Preventative control.
Interesting too that all companies profiled are ACL CCM customers, and that customers from Apex Analytix, Approva, Oversight Systems, and industry vertical CCM solutions like Actimize (banking) or XBR (retail) were not included in the article. I would have been even more interested to see any trends or patterns from customers of several different vendors.
Despite improvement opportunities if we were contacted for quotes (smile), it's a pleasure to see the topics of continuous auditing and continuous controls monitoring receiving such great publicity. As I write this, the article is both the most viewed and most emailed article of the day on CFO.com Check back and see what kind of staying power the subject can achieve.
Joe Oringel
Visual Risk IQ
Charlotte NC, USA
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