Seminar Focus and Features

·         Illustrates how operational auditing contributes toward the achievement of the organizations value drivers.

·         Identifies specific skills to be fostered and business knowledge needed to effectively deliver value-added services.

·         Teaches participates how to:

§  Develop project plans that promote the successful outcome of operational audit engagements.

§  Apply the risk-based approach to an operational audit.

§  Employ business process improvement techniques and tools during an operational audit.

§  Utilize benchmarking methodology to perform an operational audit.

§  Determine a reporting approach that creates a positive impact

Who Should Attend

·         Chief audit executives, audit directors, audit managers, audit team leads, with 2+ year’s practical auditing experience, and who are looking to integrate operational auditing into their service offering or enhance the value of operational auditing services provided to the organization.

·         Business managers responsible for ensuring effective use and management of corporate resources, who want to evaluate and improve the operational performance of business activities, processes, and / or resources deployed.

What You Will Learn

Participants will get to explore current and emerging business trends and issues across industry sectors. They will also discover that operational auditing plays an important role in today’s business environment well beyond the realm of money, compliance, and traditional internal controls, and into the realm of a trusted business partner influencing management’s pursuit of operational excellence.

They will also learn how to employ various methods, tools, and skills to collect and analyze operational information and data, identify causes of operational issues and risk exposures, and develop solutions to enhance the operational performance of business activities, processes, and / or resources deployed across the organization.

This highly interactive and dynamic program engages participants through group sharing, focused activities, and case study based simulations.

Dynamics of Operational Auditing

• Determine the factors that influenced past trends in operational auditing.
• Examine operational auditing today in terms of its changing nature, and the application of alternative methods and tools vs. traditional audit steps.
• Identify operational audit opportunities across the entire organization.
• Construct a value proposition to communicate how internal audit can be a high-impact partner in creating business value.

Value Centric Skill Sets and Knowledge

• Determine how to drive a positive change in management’s mindset about the internal auditor and internal audit activity.
• Assess your current level of technical and business knowledge.
• Assess your current level in value centric skill sets.

Planning for Success

• Recognize the key aspects of, and differences in, planning for operational audit engagements.
• Employ different sources of information to build business and technical knowledge during project planning.
• Prepare effectively for discussions with client management to achieve the meeting objectives.
• Create objectives that identify what the operational audit is intended to accomplish.
• Examine the relationship between, and need to align, the objectives, scope and approach to performing the operational audit engagement.

The Risk-Based Operational Audit

• Identify the assumptions associated with a risk-based approach to operational auditing.
• Discuss risk-based terminology to ensure a common understanding.
• Appraise alignment of operations objectives with the organization’s mission and strategic objectives.
• Evaluate performance measurement criteria for operations objectives.
• Determine which operations drive value creation.
• Predict potential risk events in relation to operations objectives and goals.
• Develop risk statements.
• Develop measures to assess the impact and likelihood of potential risk events.
• Discover operations focused controls and methods to manage risk and realize opportunities.
• Decide the appropriate tools and techniques to document operating information.
• Assess the design of operations focused control and methods.
• Evaluate the operational performance of risk management strategies.
• Develop alternative solutions to address operating issues.
• Convince client management about the value of proposed solutions.

The Process Oriented Operational Audit

• Describe the application of business process improvement concepts to an operational audit.
• Outline the components of business processes.
• Assemble baseline data and information.
• Utilize process models and analysis tools to discover issues and improvement opportunities.
• Apply process improvement techniques.
• Illustrate proposed changes.
• Outline the benefits and improvements.
• Describe the importance of testing and measuring process changes.

The Performance Driven Operational Audit

• Explain the application of benchmarking concepts to an operational audit.
• Determine the operations to benchmark.
• Define relevant and appropriate benchmarking measurement criteria and indicators.
• Perform comparative analysis to identify performance gaps and opportunities.
• Summarize benchmarking results.
• Evaluate potential performance improvement opportunities.
• Discuss benchmarking results with client management.

Creating a Positive Impact

• Assess the impact of various reporting approaches, and structure.
• Examine stylistic factors and persuasive strategies to attain buy-in to the results.

Who Will Present

KAREN MOSCROP MIIA/CIA

Karen Moscrop serves as an Independent Consultant for The IIA Inc, whereby she is an Instructor of IIA based training programs, and leads delivery of IIA Quality Assurance Reviews.  She has 22 years practical experience of internal auditing and has provided a range of internal audit consultancy and delivery services for a number of listed and public sector clients in the USA, UK, Europe, and Asia.  Karen is the author of this training course (i.e., she wrote it on behalf of the IIA).

Prior to establishing her own business, Karen spent twelve years at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and eight years at MFI Group plc. As a Managing Director at PwC Karen led the firms Internal Audit Advisory Services practice on a national basis, and was responsible for providing a range of consultancy and delivery services for clients across industry sectors, including: performance of strategic assessments and Quality Assurance Reviews against leading practice and The IIA Standards; performance of enterprise-wide risk assessments and implementing risk management strategies; designing, developing, and delivering training programs; and, developing and implementing internal audit methodologies and transformation strategies.

Karen has also authored several high impact whitepapers including “How to rebalance internal audit priorities in the Sarbanes-Oxley era”, presented at numerous public and client seminars both nationally and globally, and worked with The IIA Research Foundation to update the ‘Silver Audit Committee Effectiveness – what works best’ publication. At MFI Group, Karen served as Chief Audit Executive, and was responsible for setting up and managing the Group Internal Audit Function, and implementing a business risk management strategy.

Karen was awarded a Degree in Business Studies from Kingston College in Surrey, England with a concentration on accounting and law. She has since attained a Reiki Master Teacher Degree, and is a professionally Certified Fitness Instructor, and a Small Animal and Equine Massage Therapist.

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