KnowledgeLeader Blog

This week, we are highlighting the Top 5 Pages on KnowledgeLeader from July! Take a look at the "best of the best" of our tools that could help you simplify your audit projects.

Globalization, increased transparency of business activity, pervasive media coverage, and the growing complexity of business and business relationships have increased the ethics and compliance risks for organizations. There is greater likelihood of wrongdoing being exposed by the media, watchdog groups or government agencies or through a firm's internal systems. Illegal or unethical acts can be done intentionally by people of bad character or unintentionally by people who made decisions without full knowledge of what they were doing. The damage to a firm's reputation and the huge costs associated with fines and litigation can destroy a company. Therefore, managing for legal and ethical excellence has emerged as a critical as well as morally imperative function for all organizations.

Outsourcing has become a keystone of major business operations to the point that it’s almost a given that large companies will move certain expensive business processes and labor-intensive activities to a third-party. Is this always the best option?

In our last blog post, we took a look at the most popular publications from Q2 2018. This week, we take a look at our most popular AUDIT TOOLS. This quarter's Top 10 list has variety--we see some classics, some surprises, and a lot of content that should be useful for completing your audit projects throughout 2018 and beyond. Check out the full list and enjoy!

Each quarter, we like to take a look at the most popular publications so that we can get a sense of what our readers enjoy most. Check out our top 25 publications of Q2 2018 to make sure you haven't missed any of our most popular content!

Technology has greatly expanded the methods of creating, editing, maintaining, transmitting and retrieving records. From creation to disposition, records in electronic recordkeeping systems may now utilize a variety of media. An example of an electronic recordkeeping system is one in which a personal computer generates the original records, which are subsequently stored on a secondary electronic resource. While paper copies of the electronic records may be printed for distribution, the original records are transferred electronically.

Performance is defined as the throughput of business transactions compared to user needs, expectations or requirements. IT performance risk is the risk that a company’s IT infrastructure will be unable to perform at required levels due to inferior internal operating practices, technology and/or external relationships that threaten the demand for the organization's products or services.

An affiliation is often referred to as a person, organization or establishment associated with another as a subordinate, subsidiary or member. An affiliation can be a social or business relationship and is essentially the act of being formally connected or joined. Examples of affiliations in the business environment include sourcing partners, vendor relationships and alliances.

What is design risk? To “design” is to create, fashion, execute or construct according to plan. The term design as used here refers to the entire scope of a project. A business system design is a collection of design documents and supporting materials which define the system functionality that supports one or more business processes and in the process, creates, retrieves, updates and deletes data.

Key Performance Measures Improving the Process

An effective business process is built on a set of well-defined and clearly-stated business objectives. These key objectives articulate the ideal performance results that the company expects from that process. To monitor a business process so that it stays focused on reaching the key objectives, the company chooses appropriate performance measures. In fact, careful selection of the performance measures takes a company a long way toward improving a business process. Thus, to build and then continually improve an effective business process, a company establishes: