Auditboard is especially useful for SOX control testing. It is very convenient having all our information on a single platform. It is easy to communicate PBC requests to clients, store control testing working papers for review, communicate deficiencies and build dashboards to provide visual statistics. Situations where it might not be useful are for organizations that are smaller in size where the templates don't fit well with their internal audit/controls program. There is a significant amount of testing required before using the platform, and adapting working papers to fit in well with AuditBoard
MindBridge [Platform] is an excellent tool to use to gain additional comfort over client's data. The key areas it helps with are analytical procedure risk and inherent risk, but depending on the data you have, it can also be able to assess control risk to a degree. It's a very malleable tool that can be made to fit your client, however, it does require upfront work (as the implementation of any new technology would). The tool may not be scalable for audit work that is very low-risk and requires little hour input in the first place as it may add more hours in the long-run than the normal audit would incur. Our team has used these low-risk audits in our implementation, however, to corroborate the results we get, which we felt has helped us achieve our successes with the tool.
Using the output from MB AI we have been able to reduce the inherent risk and analytical procedures risk assessments in our audits which have reduced our substantive testing sample sizes.
The output from MB AI allows us to focus on the medium risk and high risk transactions that were recorded in the general ledger during the year.
Our younger, more technologically advanced team members really enjoy working with MB AI.
We used to perform our Risk Control Analysis (RCA) for each audit's planning in an Excel spreadsheet. Once we purchased the Risk Oversight module, AuditBoard helped us convert the RCA to a system function rather than a spreadsheet. At first, we lost some of the functionality the spreadsheet provided, but AuditBoard did continue to help us build and work towards a solution more similar to what we previously had. Though happy with it, it's still not perfect. As one example, I'd like to be able to link actual Ops Audit work steps that cover the risk and controls being outlined in the RCA, rather than just adding a comment to state which steps cover them. More of a preference, I suppose.
I also had demoed their beta Resources and Scheduling module, but it didn't have enough functionality at the time to work for how we put the quarterly Internal Audit schedule together (using Excel). One thing I recall was that you couldn't pull in SOX controls or non-chargeable work (such as education or administration) to auditor's schedules; it was meant to schedule the Ops Audits only. It is possible they have already fixed or improved this; I just haven't seen the updated version.
The only reason I do not give this a 10 is that I would like a deliverable risk report. This would enable me to offer additional services to my non-audit clients.
My experience with customer support may different since I started using the application early on. I am also providing continuous recommendations for improvement or additional features. They have always been available when I needed them and they actually listen and value my opinion. They have implemented many of our recommendations and asked for our input on possible new features.
I remember there were a lot of sync issues when I used the internally developed software, but that's probably because a few people were working on the same project at the same time. I have not come across this issue in AuditBoard
Hard to quantify. It was cheaper than the tool we had and we were able to get rid of standalone tool for surveys. overall, just better user experience for all.
