Automated Vendor Audits
Configurable and automated controls to enhance compliance and standardisation
The Challenges
Increased regulatory obligations and adherence to internal governance policy require organisations to mitigate vendor risk. New obligations from regulators (like APRA in Australia), extend information & cyber security to third-party vendors to protect sensitive information and audit and assess a variety of control areas such as criticality of the vendor arrangement and the sensitivity of related data.
However, conducting vendor risk assessments and audits can be a long and tedious process, especially given that large organisations may have hundreds of vendors. Further, the current methods of conducting vendor audits and assessments in email, spreadsheet and SharePoint introduces risk, inefficiencies and lack of centralised visibility and audit trails.
How Checkbox Solves Automated Vendor Audits
Challenges | How Does Checkbox Address It? |
Audit obligations are unmanageable due to the combined clutter from internal hierarchies, broadly distributed responsibilities, years of accumulated complexity across legacy systems, onerous policies and procedures and convoluted compliance mandates. | Checkbox’s no-code drag and drop studio empowers anyone to quickly build and deploy automation solutions for vendor audits across all the lines of vendor compliance management. |
Quality of work is poor and inefficient due to manual processing. | Automated solutions which are compliant-by-design manage information and workflow with greater accuracy and efficiency. |
Communication with the vendor is ad-hoc and slow, resulting in delays in new vendor onboarding and risk of non-compliance to regulatory obligations. | Checkbox’s automated workflow, decisioning and trigger-based notifications reduces the need for ad-hoc, manual communications via email, phone and face-to-face meetings. |
Legacy vendor management processes are typically not secure which introduces other unacceptable risks (e.g., notifiable data breach). | Checkbox facilitates custom solutions that align with bespoke company policies. The platform is also SOC2 Type II, delivering secure data intake, workflow, and collaboration functions including audit trails and data monitoring tools. |
Minimal visibility into the status and analytics of all audits. | Gain real-time insight into the progress of all audits through centralised, customisable dashboards. |
How Does Checkbox Automate This?
1. Audit templates are accessed from a company portal:
A URL can be embedded to give access to audit templates with over hundreds of control activities that can be configured to assess a wide variety of compliance and enterprise risk management scenarios, including vendor audits.
2. Information for the vendor assessment is provided:
Smart forms with on-screen guidance enable a self-serve but intuitive experience for business users to provide necessary information for the assessment.
3. Checkbox automatically retrieves information from other systems:
Information from ERP, CRM, SCM systems, such as party names, addresses, and optional clauses, can be retrieved to be used in contract generation.
4. Checkbox automates the decisioning process:
Built in decisioning logic, with complex calculations and weighted scoring determines the risk rating. This automatically decides whether an approver is needed, and which level of approval is required, making the solution compliant-by-design.
5. Checkbox can automatically store data and generated documents in other systems:
Assessments are sent to store in central document repositories such as SharePoint and Salesforce. Oversee the document generation and e-signature status.
6. Track the stages of the audit and assessment through the Checkbox dashboard:
The real-time status of the assessment progress, along with all data and documents can be viewed.
Benefits
- Faster turn-around time
Automated approvals and workflow for vendor assessments include to email reminders and task allocation. The entire process is streamlined and designed to reduce the time spent on this repetitive task.
- Eliminate errors and improve the quality of audit outputs
The automation of information intake and sharing, in parallel with the standardisation of approval workflows ensures error-free assessment each time.
- Improve maintainability
Through no-code, the solution can be easily and independently modified for any changes in policy or regulation, as well as any logic or format changes. With no coding expertise required, compliance professionals are empowered to rapidly overlay internal policy requirements and deploy compliant solutions in a matter of weeks.
- Improve client’s experience
Moving from manual based audits to automated controls and workflow ensures the entire process convenient and effortless for both vendors and the compliance team.
- Improve security
Checkbox is SOC2 Type II and in turn, delivers secure data intake, workflow, and collaboration functions including audit trails and data monitoring tools.
Key Features
- No code app builder & studio
- Smart and dynamic forms
- Decision-tree logic
- Automated email notifications
- Approval workflow automation
- Integrations with third-party systems
- Tailored dashboards to view analytics and track progress
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