Case Study: Audit Response System
Overview
- Our client, a large multinational law firm, was expending
costly man hours on routine audit inquiry responses.
- We used Object Pascal, Lotus Notes, and Microsoft SQL
Server to develop an audit response system that takes advantage of an
already-existing database and
e-mail system to automate much of the audit inquiry procedure.
- Now, coordinators spend over 75% less time taking care of
audit inquiry responses and can focus their energies on more productive
matters.
Situation
Under a 1976 agreement, auditing firms hired by public companies to
investigate and publicize the company's financial information
for the SEC, can inquire of the company's legal
representation as to any potential losses, over a certain monetary
threshold, for pending litigation.
At our client firm, these routine inquiries were handled by a
multi-step procedure:
- First, an employee known as the audit inquiry coordinator
would read the inquiry letter to glean any pertinent information.
- Secondly, the coordinator would search an Informix Database
for the names and e-mail addresses of each person who had worked on any
matter for the company in question over the specified period of time.
- Then the coordinator would send an e-mail to each person
involved, asking them to estimate whether or not the company in
question was likely to have a significant monetary legal loss in any of
its pending litigation.
- The auditor would then wait for responses from all of the
e-mail recipients, perhaps sending out reminders if a response was not
received in a timely manner.
- Once all of the responses were received, the auditor had to
look over each of the individual e-mails to try to summarize the
information.
- The auditor would then write an appropriate letter
including the information summary.
- Finally, the auditor would send out the letter to the
auditing company which had requested the information.
Solution
With the program we developed, we were able to virtually
eliminate steps two through six.
After reading the query letter, the auditor simply inputs the
information into the audit response program. The program then searches
the
Informix Database and automatically generates and sends e-mail to the
appropriate people. We used Lotus Notes to generate a customized e-mail
which has a link to the audit response system. The e-mail recipient
simply
clicks on the link and enters the pertinent information. That
information is then retained in a Microsoft SQL Server database. At any
time during this procedure, the audit response system can be directed
to search the
database for missing responses and send out e-mail reminders. Once all
of the responses are received, the audit response system combines the
information into
a one-screen, easy-to-read summary. The system can then be used to
automatically generate one of several differently structured letters
appropriate to the particular inquiry. Once the Auditor approves the
letter, it is sent out to the auditing company which had
requested the information.
Conclusion
As you can see, our application takes care of the routine aspects of
the audit inquiry procedure so that coordinators can focus solely on
the other, unique responsibilities of their job. Furthermore, we take
advantage of pre-existing data stored on a legacy platform to maximize
our client’s previous investments. Finally, we use the
existing e-mail program to easily guide the user to the application. In
the end, we have met our goal of finding a solution that makes our
client more efficient and more connected, with an application that
integrates easily with their other office software.