TeamMate: Internal Audit Management Made Agile

The dawn of change for Internal Audit Management lies amidst continual challenges. For the internal audit team at Aviva Financial Services, there were many hurdles. It took the team about ten days to collate information from far-flung parts of the organisation and practically, this could only be done once a month. By the time the information reached the Board it was often already two months old. In addition, there was a struggle to reconcile incompatible formats, errors and missing details. Realising that efficiency and effectiveness had to be improved to guide Board decision making, the team unanimously decided to implement TeamMate, an audit, risk, and compliance software solution developed and hosted by Netherlands-based Wolters Kluwer. TeamMate is an ecosystem of audit, compliance, and risk management software, imagined, created, and field-tested by auditors for auditors.

TeamMate’s assembly of solutions —Audit Management, Controls Management, and Analytics— collectively provide audit and compliance professionals with the confidence they need to deliver high quality work and add value to their organisations. TeamMate AM (Audit Management) is an integrated toolset that allows auditors to streamline their workflows, move toward paperless collaboration, and share insights across teams and locations. At the heart of TeamMate AM are TeamEWP and TeamCentral. Powered by TeamMate’s robust database architecture, TeamEWP allows users to bring efficiencies to the documentation and review process. TeamCentral is a web-based global audit and issue tracker which ensures all your information from audit project status to issues and recommendations, remains at your fingertips. It forms the basis for simple and intuitive reporting. Additionally, TeamMate also has a Professional Services team of credentialed experts who provide knowledge and expertise to complement and enhance our clients’ in-house and co-sourced audit and risk resources. “TeamMate allows audit departments of any size to embrace the digital workplace by facilitating a connected and collaborative environment across the department.

In addition, TeamMate allows audit departments to easily align with global best practices including IIA standards to unlock the efficiency and effectiveness, transparency benefits that this brings,” says Derek Titterington, VP Sales, TeamMate Asia Pacific.

The newest addition to the company’s portfolio, TeamMate+, represents the next generation of audit management, and is based on TeamMate’s guiding principles of simplicity, usability, and configurability. The TeamMate+ design and technology embraces the modern workplace where auditors can continue to work across heterogeneous devices and across multiple web browsers. TeamMate+ is fully integrated and offers a diverse set of fully configurable fields and workflows, to ensure that it is defined as methodology agnostic.

TeamMate’s targeted and configurable array of solutions escalates user productivity by an average of 20 to 25 percent. On that note, a year after its TeamMate implementation, it has been possible for the audit team at Aviva to pull together management information within two hours. Now the data is more flexible, and the quantity has been reduced by 40 percent, removing duplication and unnecessary material. The role of auditors today has evolved beyond delivering mere results to providing valuable insights. There is an ever-increasing demand for audit resources to be able to analyse the data and foresee potential issues for the organisation, and TeamMate facilitates this demand.

“We have more than 2500 organisations across 120 countries already using TeamMate. No matter whether they are large corporate enterprises, smaller organisations or government departments, in major countries like the U.S. or small countries like Samoa or Fiji, we are confident that our customers will see and do see the value in TeamMate and understand that the value they will realise will be well worth the investment,” Derek Titterington adds. TeamMate, as the name suggests, is beyond just software. Through its global customer events, TeamMate provides a platform for interaction, where auditors can learn and share best practices among other leading audit departments, and promote the audit, risk and compliance profession. More importantly, over the years users have influenced, and continue to influence, the future of TeamMate by connecting face-to-face with the company’s own developers, technical experts, and business managers.

“In the years to come the intricacies pertaining to government departments and global business, their underlying audit processes, and concerned regulations, are bound to evolve,” Titterington notes. “As the regulatory environment continues to increase in complexity, the audit and compliance community can remain assured that we will continue to enhance our offerings to ensure they have the best possible platform to support their needs.”