Opportunity Auditing

Course Introduction

The risk-based focus being increasingly adopted is universally accepted as the new benchmark for Internal Audit. The flip side of risk, however, is opportunity. Specifically targeting significant areas of business opportunities can deliver major measurable benefits to the organization whilst at the same time reducing the associated risks.

This is particularly true if the areas of the business targeted are those which are often overlooked by management.  With budgets under even greater scrutiny, demonstrating value for money is more important than ever.

This Opportunity Auditing training course will provide the tools and techniques to develop and deliver an opportunity focused plan and deliver measurable added value.

This Oxford Management Centre Opportunity Auditing training course will highlight:

• The power of opportunity auditing and value for money reviews
• A proven approach to target the audit programme to optimize success
• How to focus on areas of opportunity in regular assurance reviews?
• The way to identify and deal with over-managed business areas
• A simple method to reduce unnecessary controls

Objectives

 By the end of this Opportunity Auditing training course, you will learn to: 

• Apply the theory and practice of opportunity auditing
• Deliver real cost savings to the business
• More than cover the costs of your function with these cost savings
• Plan assignments effectively to focus on opportunity as well as risk
• Audit business areas which may have not been previously covered
• Assist management to simplify and streamline processes
• Measure performance in a more business centric manner

Training Methodology

This is a basic/intermediate level course and delegates are not required to have any previous experience in fraud prevention or detection to attend. Delegates should have a good educational standard and/or a professional qualification and no advanced preparation is required.

The delivery method will be Group-live with exercises and role-plays to simulate audit scenarios and situations that assurance professionals will encounter. A short examination will be given at the end of the course.

Organisational Impact

This Opportunity Auditing training course will benefit organizations in all business sectors. It will provide the basis for a subtle but hugely powerful shift in the focus of Internal Audit towards a much more consultancy and value adding approach. The financial and operational benefits will be significant.

This Opportunity Auditing 5-day training course will enable organizational knowledge to be enhanced in the following areas:

• Identifying processes which are carried out ‘just because they always have been’
• Determination of activities which add little business value and can be significantly reduced
• A focus on the 3 E’s (Economy, Efficiency, and Effectiveness)
• Identification and simplification of overlapping processes
• Reduction of over-managed risks

Personal Impact

Participants will increase their personal knowledge and performance abilities as follows:

• Understanding good management practice in quality, environment and health and safety
• Passing on best practice knowledge to staff they meet during audits
• Documenting and presenting to management observations and concerns in a concise manner so that improvement can be ascertained
• Advising their own organisation in improvement in quality, environment and health and safety
• Advising supplier organisations in improvement in quality, environment and health and safety
• Gaining knowledge of parts of their organisation that they would not normally see, thus offering themselves a greater flexibility to take on responsibilities in a wider range of departments

Who Should Attend?

This Oxford Management Centre Opportunity Auditing training course is suitable to a wide range of professionals but will greatly benefit:

• Audit Managers
• Senior and Lead Auditors
• Quality Auditors
• Heads of Audit (CAE’s)
• Managers needing a broader understanding of opportunity identification

Course Outline