Being a financial guy, I love auditors. I’ve lived through audits, and I live for the day when the bean counters walk in my door…NOT. Since I’ve been in the business of Enterprise Content Management (see the ECM blog for a definition), I tell my customers I can make their auditors disappear.
Here’s why I love my auditor (and please don’t let the sarcastic tone in any way distract you from my message):
- They enjoy full-fare flights - to and fro - which gets billed to me.
- They eat in the finest restaurants - which gets billed to me.
- They stay at the nicest hotels - which gets billed to me.
- They take over my conference room - for which I have paid.
- They make spontaneous demands on my accounting staff, which is already overworked - for which I pay.
- They leave my files in total disarray, and sometimes they mingle content between my folders - which I have to pay someone to clean up.
- And then they drink all my coffee - for which I pay.
I’m not the exception. They treat all their clients the same. No longer. Here’s what happens when companies install ECM.
For the auditors who insist on having a handoff of information, clients have the auditors send them a list of accounts that they intend to examine. In less than 10 minutes, clients conduct a search, export the results, burn those results to a CD and ship that CD to their auditor’s office via FedEx.
That’s compared to: going to the files, pulling the files, dropping a “pulled” card into their filing cabinets to mark where the file goes and where it is, boxing up the files and setting them on a conference room table to await their auditor’s arrival.
The auditors everyone loves to miss the most are the ones that allow a company to set up a user ID for the auditors to use remotely. The auditor then can access whatever records they need from the comfort of their own offices. If that strikes fear in your heart, let me just say, the document management systems we offer can limit an auditor’s access to documents. An auditor will only be able to view documents their client allows them to view. And then - on a daily basis - our customer’s document management system can email a report of the documents the auditor viewed, what the auditor printed, and how long the auditor was in the system.
Our clients have now eliminated any contact with their auditor, well, at least until they receive any follow-up questions.
You too, can miss your auditor.
Tags: #documentmanagement, #document_imaging, #document_management, #enterprise_content_management, #paperless, #paul_engel, #vebridge, ECM