Customer Value Story: Passing with Flying Colors

The pandemic has disrupted operating models of businesses across the globe. Since the beginning, LogicManager has partnered with our clients to help them pivot and prepare. As we wrote about in our blog, our company was built on a foundation of seeing around the corner. In February, we rolled out a COVID-19 relief package to our customers. In May, we rolled out a Return to Work and Preparing for Wave 2 Solution package.

Over that critical period of time, we collected over 160 value stories from our customers about how they leveraged our guidance to drive their businesses forward. This series will delve deeper into those stories in hopes of helping other businesses throughout this challenging time.

Topic: Building an audit management program to meet your most pressing and long term needs.

Company Profile

This LogicManager client offers unique products and services designed to power new investment opportunities. Their platform provides high-net-worth individuals and small to mid-sized businesses access to cost-effective liquidity solutions for their assets.

Located in Texas, this company is fairly new and small; team members wear many different hats and often operate in “build the plane as you fly it” mode. They value strong leadership and integrity above all else, and pride themselves on keeping their clients’ data safe and secure.

Challenge

One September morning, our (soon-to-be) client received a knock at the door. A third party auditor was requesting that they present an audit report – and the deadline was in two weeks. Not only did they need to generate an audit report, but they also were required to share all of the raw data that would go into the report.

This felt like an impossible lift. Unfortunately, having recently dedicated most of their time and energy on perfecting their business model, hiring top talent and delivering quality service lines, this company had neglected their audit process. Suddenly, something that had fallen to the wayside became top of mind.

As a new business, this client’s audit management program naturally lacked maturity and they simply did not have experience with a formalized audit timeline. Furthermore, a miscommunication had left key players in the dark on the associated due date requirements. It quickly became clear to their leadership team that they needed professional help in order to deliver.

Solution

We received a call from this company’s Chief Risk Officer, who requested a demo of our audit solution. Before it was over, we’d agreed they were a great fit to partner with us and began working together to help them meet their critical deadline.

To satisfy our new client’s most pressing needs, LogicManager’s advisory team was able to:

• Structure a basic audit implementation based on all of the information provided by the client
• From there, build a narrative audit report to demonstrate the mitigating controls that were currently in place
• Cleanly export all data related to the audit into a report, including:
• Scoping information
• Relevant findings
• Future recommendations

This was a fast-paced implementation; our team was able to provide our client with the raw data and comprehensive audit report in time to meet the two-week deadline.

Our team of advisors is always focused on helping our clients reach their long term goals. In this instance, that meant implementing a mature audit management program to keep them on track and prevent future surprises. Fortunately, in the process of gathering all of this client’s data and building the audit report, our team inevitably landed on some important insights that would serve as the foundation for building their longer term plan.

Once the report was completed, our client and their advisor were able to have more strategic conversations about their audit management plan. By leveraging LogicManager’s configuration capabilities, our team created audit finding forms as well as scoping information that directly matched the third party audit documentation. We were then able to build out the necessary components directly within the LogicManager audit tool and upload the historical information. From there, we generated a clean and customized report to demonstrate all information related to the audit.

Business Outcome

This client can rest assured knowing that they now have a mature audit management program in place at their organization. While you can’t put a price on peace of mind, let’s examine some of the greatest value adds for our customer as a result of this implementation:

• Because LogicManager is an ERM software, this company is enabled to take a risk-based approach to everything they do. Now, whenever they uncover information during an audit, they are able to complete a root-cause risk assessment and implement mitigation and monitoring best practices to remediate.
• Your reputation is on the line as soon as it becomes public knowledge that you failed or missed an audit. How could this organization maintain customer trust without proving that they have methods in place to keep their information safe? Had they not been able to pull their audit report together in time, their bottom line could have been negatively impacted.
• Enterprise-wide engagement is the most clear-cut path to driving results. Their CRO can transform the way he communicates about risk across organizational silos to prevent future miscommunications. LogicManager’s risk-based translator tool introduces a uniform way to talk about risk, and can be easily implemented for audit.
• During a typical 40-hour work week, risk managers spend over 24 hours on tactical tasks rather than strategic planning. Our customer base indicates that our software cuts this time to about 6 hours per week. This company can now dedicate more time to developing sound strategy for governing their organization by maintaining a streamlined, easily adaptable audit management program.
• Thanks to LogicManager’s help, this client was able to turn their report in on time. Had they not been able to do so, they could have faced fines or penalties. Legal fees and the associated internal labor contribute to major hard dollar savings for investing in a software like LogicManager.

Not only did this company achieve success on paper by passing their audit, but in the process of doing so they learned important business lessons. Ultimately, the audit report proved not only to the auditor but to their valued customers, that they truly operate with strong leadership and integrity.