The importance of an appropriate audit

When an organisation conducts regular audits and can thus demonstrate compliance with standards and guidelines, this is a positive sign to third parties. For example, customers, prospects or suspects can see from this that the company they want to do business with is reliable and offers a certain level of assurance. An appropriate audit provides insights into possible improvements that can be implemented. It also reveals what measures need to be taken to ensure and/or improve the required quality. 

Certification by an audit

If you want to obtain a certificate or seal of approval for your organisation, you can have an external audit carried out. Having a certificate or hallmark is usually a hard requirement in a tender or for awarding a contract. Audits demonstrate with objective evidence that a process or organisation meets the requirements of a standard, guideline or legislation. To ensure this objectivity, it is important that the auditor is independent of the organisation.

The audit examination, which consists of several steps, assesses how successfully and effectively the processes are deployed in an organisation. With the certificate, you can ultimately demonstrate that you meet the established requirements.  As an organisation, this could benefit you greatly by, for example, increasing customer confidence with regard to obtaining a webshop seal of approval or winning tenders because you comply with ISO standards.

Insights from audits

An appropriate audit is a tool for continuous improvement. The following insights can be uncovered by an audit:

• Where bottlenecks and problems occur;
• Where (or when) there are potential risks;
• Where improvements are possible and/or necessary;
• The perceived effect of implemented measures;
• The effect of activities;
• To what extent you are able to meet your objectives.

A modern document management system is web-based and can be accessed via any workstation or mobile device within or – if desired – outside your organisation. Documents can be shared with your chain partners via the cloud in a secure and controlled manner.

Digitising audits

Digitising an appropriate audit can bring several benefits when you use the right software to do so. For example, checks can be performed, tracked and analysed digitally. There is real-time insight in up-to-date reports. It is also no longer necessary to enter data manually into an Excel document. All this saves the entire organisation a huge amount of time. All in all, digitising an audit leads to the following benefits:

• At a glance, you create a clear dashboard that tracks the status of all work and its effects;
• It can help identify and reduce risks;
• On the other hand, it can also help turn risks into opportunities;
• This means that either way, it is a good tool for making strategic decisions.
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Matching software

Audit software can help digitise audits and their set-up, planning and execution. In addition, reporting afterwards and linking follow-up actions to the findings is easier.

Whether you want to use this audit software to better comply with guidelines, laws or regulations, or to conduct employee and/or customer satisfaction surveys, it is important that the software fits your organisation’s working methods. With Zenya, you decide what is important. And does it not work? You can easily adjust it yourself until it does.