Third-Party Audits

Many companies involve third parties to support their businesses. We see more companies outsourcing their key operations to strategic business partners. While operations are outsourced, responsibilities remain with the business. An effective way to ensure that your vendor or partner works in accordance with your expectations, company guidelines (e.g. code of conduct) and regulatory requirements, is to perform regular third-party (vendor) audits. The focus of these audits could be to identify cost savings, internal control systems or compliance with regulatory requirements (including anti-bribery and corruption requirements, privacy (GDPR) requirements, etc.). This is often done as a preventive measure and often supported with data analytics (e.g. when reconciling financial records).