Switching to remote working does not have to be a burden. Learn how averQ helped a bank make this change quickly and easily
The word that keeps popping up in my head through the past few weeks of this global crisis has been “scrambling”. Scrambling to keep track of where family and friends are, scrambling to make sure the house is stocked up with food and medical supplies, scrambling to find information about the lockdown… scrambling, scrambling, scrambling. In the midst of this crisis, with all of us working from home due to the mandatory call for social distancing, we’re scrambling to setup remote working connections. This scrambling is compounded by the dependence on the Information Technology (IT) team to setup the connections – which if you are part of audit and compliance teams probably means you are not very high up on the already strapped IT resources’ priority list. More importantly, this scramble is also intensified by the need for very secure connections because we would all agree these teams deal with very sensitive data.
So how can averQ unscramble all of this for you? Instead of a hypothetical case, let me give you a real world example:
A bank’s internal audit team, with 100s of branches spread over a very large geographical area, has been using averQ for the past 3 years. They plan their audits, allocate resources, manage their audit universe, execute audits, track and resolve audit issues, generate audit reports, and produce real-time dashboards for management and audit committees oversight. They are using averQ to give them an all-in-one audit solution for a team of over a 100 auditors interacting with 1,000s of auditees. Through averQ their small team of audit executives, working from their central headquarters, oversee a larger team of auditors travelling to various branches performing audits. This central executive audit team is responsible for the entire workflow of planning audits directed to risk areas and tracking issue resolution with the branch auditees after the auditors have completed the audits and moved on to their next engagements.
During the monumental crisis of the current COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown that has followed, a large and geographically spread out internal audt team would typically be faced with many work challenges. However, because they already had secure connections to averQ in place, they didn’t have to wait for IT to give them access to their audit tools. There were no sudden barriers to accessing documentation or data for their audits since averQ was already providing them a centralized portal to all necessary digital data points. The only real change in their workflow was the interruption of face-to-face interactions the auditors had with the central executive team and the branch auditees. These interactions were not only critical for a smooth execution of the audit plan, but also for the discussion with auditees to resolve audit issues, put action plans in place, and track compliances. With averQ , the team has been able continue this vital activity without missing a beat.
Over the last 3 years, averQ has provided a fully integrated, secure web meeting app through its partnership with Moxtra. The Moxtra’s omnichannel client engagement platform is deployed at the largest financial institutions with rigorous security and compliance requirements. This bank’s audit teams simply added the app to their projects and were immediately able to invite the participants to web meetings, including with high fidelity videos, for completing all their audit interactions while working remotely. Together with averQ , you have a simple and secure way to have your entire team’s remote workflow be as close as possible to working on site. Please reach out to your averQ deployment team to learn how we can switch your internal audit team to remote working.
Let’s save the “scrambling” for the eggs.
About the Author
Bhaskar Shenoy has been with averQ as a Senior Deployment Manager for the over 7 years, before that he was working towards his PhD at Texas A&M University in Mathematical Modelling of Control Systems. He has deployed averQ at many Banks, General Insurance Firms, Securities Traders and Audit Firms, with a particular focus on integrating Risk, Compliance and Audit Functions at Financial Services organisations. HIs Focus these days is towards productivity and performance improvements through the use of Automation and AI.
