With major incidents constantly in the news, cybersecurity, IT general controls and data privacy represent high risk areas for most organizations. We will assess your cybersecurity against established frameworks, such as the NIST cybersecurity framework, to identify opportunities for improvement. We can also develop a scoring method derived from assessment results to provide a trend over time, with commentary and analysis on which areas are improving or deteriorating and why. Working with your legal department, we will also assess your organization’s data privacy processes against applicable regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union.

Accurate and timely financial reporting can be assured by a reliable and efficient set of controls. More is not necessarily better, however. To most effectively leverage limited resources, control activities must be optimized to obtain maximum risk mitigation at minimum cost. We will assist in setting up your program, whether a formal SOX program or otherwise, and/or assess the design of your financial controls to identify:
• Gaps in risk mitigation and opportunities to mitigate risk more effectively
• Redundant/ineffective activities or other unnecessary activities which can be reduced/eliminated
• Opportunities for automation.
We can also test controls to determine whether they are operating effectively.

Market opportunities abound, but without the right product and service offerings you risk losing relevance, becoming commoditized or worse. We will assess your product management and R&D processes including governance, market & competitive analysis, strategic alignment, intake, prioritization, resourcing, agility, quality, information security, and continuous improvement.

You have a great strategy and product portfolio, but how effective are your revenue generation processes in delivering the results that you expect? Based on risk, we will assess the effectiveness of management systems and business processes related to sales (including direct, channel and agency), sales compensation, marketing, services (pre-sales and delivery), and customer satisfaction.

Treasury activities are essential to maintaining a healthy balance sheet, but, if not properly controlled, can also come with potentially catastrophic risks. Large amounts of cash not only present a tempting target for fraud, but errors, and subsequent attempts to recover from them, can lead to material losses and related adverse publicity. We will assess your governance and business processes for the management of cash and investments, bank accounts and payments, FX and interest rate hedging, borrowing and risk management as applicable.

Sourcing goods and services at lowest total cost, while mitigating key risks, is key to any organization. We will assess whether your commodity management and procurement processes effectively select suppliers, negotiate prices and terms, and manage risks including cost, quality, delivery, business continuity and other relevant risks such as cybersecurity and compliance. Our approach can be applied to routine procurement activities as well as to specialized activities such as large construction projects.

Delivering high-quality product on schedule to customers at lowest total cost is critical for any hardware business. We will assess your demand and capacity planning, materials requirements planning, inventory management, quality control, delivery, business continuity and customer experience management processes to identify any significant gaps or opportunities to drive improved outcomes as measured by your key performance indicators.

Conducting business internationally can bring enormous opportunities for any business, but also creates exposure to the risk of violation of anti-corruption laws and regulations such as the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the UK Bribery Act. Working with your Legal department, we will assess your anti-corruption compliance program design, business process controls and test their operating effectiveness. Areas addressed can include overall governance of the program, management system, and business process controls over relationships and activities with third parties such as resellers and agents, procurement and expense controls.