The 10 Recommended Audit Management Solution Providers, 2019

2019-Volume-5 Issue-6

www.insightssuccess.com

Jim Wetekamp CEO

Delivering Best-in-class Integrated Risk Management Solu ons

E The Changing Face of Audit Management

W

ith the advent of AI, Machine Learning and others, technology continues to grow at a speed of light with no signs of slowing down. The way we live or work on daily basis is also being revolutionized and it is of utmost importance that audit management does not fall behind when it comes to adapting new technologies.

Since the great depression of 1929, audit has evolved steadily adapting to the computing age and in recent years the rise of data analytics and CPAs have played a very important role in the process. With time, automation and digitization of business information are reshaping the world of finance, changing how we work.

You know what is the most unprecedented thing in this whole process? It is the speed of this change. According to various reports, as much as 49 percent of the work activities could soon be automated by using the current technology. It is also projected that, 40 percent of basic accounting work could be automated by the end of 2020. All thanks to robotics!

So, below are few technologies that are changing the Audit Management scenario for good; Blockchain: I know a lot of people who often refers the Blockchain technology as a bubble. However, I beg to differ in this case. Blockchain is still in its infancy and we need to give it a bit of time in order to mature. Coming back to auditing, traditionally auditors wait till the end of the financial year to conduct all the audits. On the other hand, thanks to Blockchain based smart contacts, an audit can be created immediately when a transaction is done. Now with Blockchain, auditing would bring much more transparency and accountability on the table.

Analytics: Since the invention of analytics, technology is going through rapid changes. Analytics helps the auditors to focus their efforts on outliers of the whole data set and provide important analysis of huge data sets. Analytics holds the advantage of analyzing the whole data sets instead of testing some sample based data set, which eventually helps in a proper and correct audit.

“

Rather than maintaining the status quo, be a flag bearer of the future.

“

Kaustav Roy

Artificial Intelligence: Since its inception, AI is taking over various industries. So, how Audit would have been left behind?

Thanks to the AI based cognitive computing, now audit professionals get many opportunities, which eventually leads to derive important insights through audit processes. At the end of the day, all these helps organizations to take effective measures in order to maximize value.

So, as stated currently audit management is standing at a very important crossroad, where it only has two options; 1) maintaining the status quo or 2) work hard and bring the much needed change.

Taking into consideration the importance of technology in audit, most of the organizations have started to find out how technology can change the space and how it can be applied. In order to acknowledge the significant contribution in the Audit Management industry, Insights Success has shortlisted “The 10 Recommended Audit Management Solution Providers 2019”, who are working round the clock to make the Audit Management space a better and improved place to work on.

We have Riskonnect as our Cover Story, which helps organizations to intelligently plan for and respond to all risks that could potentially damage corporate reputation and/or restrict strategic growth. Riskonnect’s Internal Audit solution allows organizations to take a risk-based approach to audit. Because risks can be identified top-down and bottom-up, the company enables audit teams to identify and capture the most important risks and drill down accordingly.

Also, while flipping the pages of the magazine, don’t forget to go through the articles and CXOs written by our in house editorial team and industry experts respectively.

Happy Reading!

24

Entrepreneur Echo System Sustaining Entrepreneurial Spirit in the Modern Era

Cover Story

Riskonnect Delivering Best-in-class Integrated Risk Management Solutions

Industry Intel

40

From Editor's Desk The Journey to Self-Discovery

16

Allowing Regulated Entities to Connect and Structure their Data

34

Expert's Outlook

Fostering a Risk-based Company Culture

18 AuditComply Improving Quality by Mitigating Risks

20 CheckVentory Innovation Enabling EďŹƒcient Inventory Management for Organizations

28 DQS Inc. Adding Value beyond CertiďŹ cations

30 ECAT Making Audit Management Easy

38 Qualitize, Inc Simplifying Lives, Delivering Value

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Managing Editor Anish Miller

Execu ve Editor

Assistant Editors

Bhushan Kadam

Jenny Fernandes Hitesh Dhamani

Visualizer

Art & Design Director

David King

Amol Kamble

Co-designer

Associate Designer

Shweta Ambilwade

Senior Sales Manager

Business Development Manager

Kshi j S

Peter Collins

Marke ng Manager

Sales Execu ves

John Ma hew

David, Kevin, Mark, Sanket

Technical Head

Business Development Execu ves

Jacob Smile

Steve, Joe, Alan, Biny

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marke ng Manager Marry D'Souza

SME-SMO Execu ve Prashant Chevale

Research Analyst Calvin Jones

Database Management Stella Andrew

Circula on Manager Robert Brown

Technology Consultant David Stokes

sales@insightssuccess.com

May, 2019 Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com

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Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

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rganizations can ensure security with adequate precautions and safety measures. Be it the infrastructure or the health and safety of employees, eliminating risks is as vital as devising a business strategy. Today, many risk management solution companies are providing innovative options to help organizations achieve this safety and security. One such provider, Riskonnect, is leading the way with integrated solutions to mitigate such risks or threats in any organization.

Headquartered in Kennesaw, GA, Riskonnect is the global leader in Integrated Risk Management technology. Its growing suite of cloud-based solutions integrate risk from across the organization and across the globe. Riskonnect’s platform has a unique ability to bring together insurable and non-insurable risk, giving clients an unbeatable view of risk enterprise-wide.

Riskonnect’s highly configurable technology helps organizations understand, manage, and control risks, which positively affects shareholder value. The platform allows

forward-thinking organizations to easily cope with increased scrutiny and accountability for corporate governance, while better managing strategic risk.

With Riskonnect, organizations can intelligently plan for and respond to all risks that could potentially damage corporate reputation and/or restrict strategic growth.

Riskonnect’s Internal Audit solution allows organizations to take a risk-based approach to audit. Because risks can be identified top-down and bottom-up, Riskonnect enables audit teams to identify and capture the most important risks and drill down accordingly. In addition to improved risk identification and management, the solution can attach company objectives to detailed risks, which can be managed and self-assessed within each line of business.

Internal Audit can ensure everything aligns to the company’s overarching, top-level objectives -- and compare assessments against management’s view of risk.

Riskonnect understands the most successful organizations will leverage solutions that can handle all risks enterprisewide. This was the company’s founding principle -- and it continues to hold true today.

‘‘

Innovation in Focus Riskonnect provides a suite of integrated solutions that encompass every aspect of risk management throughout an enterprise. In addition to Internal Audit, which manages complex audit procedures end-to-end, Riskonnect’s solutions include: Risk Management Information System seamlessly consolidates data from multiple sources, automates routine processes, and uses sophisticated analytics to turn complicated information into actionable intelligence.

Claims Administration integrates people, systems, and claims data, and automates routine processes so companies can resolve even the most complex claims quickly, easily, and fairly.

Vendor Risk Management collects all vendor information – including agreements, contracts, policies, and access credentials – into one place to efficiently monitor vendors throughout the entire relationship.

Enterprise Risk Management combines insurable and non-insurable risks so companies can anticipate, access, mitigate, and monitor every threat from every corner of the organization.

Governance & Compliance aggregates all corporate and legal policies, procedures, and requirements from across the organization into one centralized location.

Health & Safety tracks all safety processes, training status, compliance requirements, hazard data, and incidents.

Overcoming Challenges Integrating Enterprise Risk Management has been a significant challenge for the Internal Audit function. Risks today cannot be effectively managed in silos. Risk management has expanded beyond insurable risks to those non-insurable risks that could have a significant impact on the enterprise. For example, operational and reputational risks are growing threats in today’s “always-on” media

environment. Internal audit plays a critical role in overseeing how these ‘new’ risks are being managed. And it is essential to keep this function constantly appraised of changes to emerging exposures to ensure best practices are in place. While not new, the independence from management and the direct access to the Audit Committee or the Board of Directors is still vital for Internal Audit leadership. Riskonnect’s Internal Audit solution helps clients achieve tangible results that will be appreciated by leadership. Companies can easily manage the complete audit process on a secure, expandable platform that simplifies data collection and analysis, provides clear and actionable intelligence, and enhances auditor productivity.

The Leader’s Influence Jim Wetekamp is the CEO of Riskonnect. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Indiana University Bloomington. He brings a wealth of knowledge to the Riskonnect team, with experience in supply-chain management, business intelligence, procurement, management consulting, SaaS, and more.

Jim has more than 20 years of product and leadership experience, most recently serving as CEO of BravoSolution, a Chicago-based cloud procurement solutions company. He joined BravoSolution in 2008, following its acquisition of VerticalNet, his former employer. As CEO of BravoSolution, Jim successfully navigated its sale to an Accel-KKR portfolio company after years of rapid growth.

Sharing his perspective about Riskonnect, Jim says, “Riskonnect embraced the concept of Integrated Risk Management from the start. We are the only provider in the market with a single, integrated solution that connects the dots between insurable and non-insurable risks.

And we continue to expand and refine our products and services to give our customers the clearest view of risk across the enterprise.”

‘‘ Integrated Risk Management Riskonnect’s unique approach to global risk means that the audit management space has the opportunity to integrate with other functions that require validation of risk-related controls. This allows for a 360-degree view of risks geographically, functionally, and procedurally, which drives focus and emphases on key validation points.

The company’s vision is to continue to grow the breadth and depth of its offerings across the risk spectrum, across industries, and across geographies – all focused on driving customer success.

Customer Success Stories Riskonnect’s customers are delighted by what they have been able to accomplish: A retail chain’s OSHA compliance program has gone from “chaos” to “nirvana” with Riskonnect. By intelligently automating its OSHA-recordable event collection and safety incident review programs, the chain has seen — in its first year of implementation — a 14% reduction in lost days and a 26% increase in job transfer and restricted duty days.

At a large financial services firm, nine nurses manage workers’ compensation claims for 10,000 employees. With portal technology by Riskonnect, those nurses are now

saving 30 to 45 minutes per claim. (And their data is more accurate and secure.)

“With Riskonnect, there is just more time to focus, and you can spend more time on the analytics, as opposed to the data gathering.” – National Food Company “We don’t too often take time to step back and acknowledge when a job has been well done. I would like to take this opportunity to tell all of you what an incredible, outstanding team you are.”

“You designed, developed, tested, and implemented a Risk Management Information System with deployment to 37 countries (including developing the training materials and conducting the training of almost 100 users in those countries) in just five months! You guys are awesome. And while we still have work to do, I want you to know how proud I am of what has been done, and how much I appreciate all those midnight hours spent bringing this project home.” – Jackie Hair, Executive Director, Risk Management - Corporate Ingram Micro, Inc.

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Industry Intel

Allowing Regulated Entities

to Connect and Structure

their Data W

hat are the latest trends in business world? An impressive raise in regulatory, compliance and risk management requirements together with an exponential growth of data that corporations struggle to manage. The idea behind Governance.com is a spot-on observation and vision of our founders, Bert (CEO) and Rob Boerman (CTO) to allow regulated entities to connect and structure their data.

As a Regtech, our purpose is to allow our clients to structure and simplify their data and control their business by building their workflows, checklists and activities around it. Governance.com is a totally flexible and customizable central system which can be interfaced with legacy and external systems of our clients. All their data and operational flows are centrally linked and easily accessible via our platform. This explains our continuous growth and recognition among the industry (winning Fintech of the year Award in 2016 in LU, included on Fintech 50 2018 and Global 100 Regtech in 2017).

We all know that a revolutionary vision and performant system do not guarantee commercial success. Regtech is a relatively young concept which has to show all its potential and concrete value to traditional companies. I truly believe that the key for a successful collaboration lies on an open and transparent communication. The biggest concern and

16 | May 2019

pain point of Regtech companies is the lengthy decision and procurement process of the companies. There is no point to get frustrated on this as we have no control on this process. I believe the optimal way to build long-lasting relationships is to focus on the challenges, needs and culture of our clients. An intensive risk assessment, a multi-layer decision taking and procurement process is part of the DNA of the regulated companies we are talking to. So, either deal with it or stay aside for Regtech CCOs. This is one of the first strategic decisions I have taken as Commercial Director: rather than beginning to talk how marvelous and innovative our solution is (and I truly believe Governance.com is an awesome platform) we always begin discussions by asking our contacts: How do you manage your business?

What would you like to achieve with it? Ÿ What are you biggest pains? st Ÿ Who are the users? What is the 1 thing they will do on Governance.com? Ÿ Ÿ

Based on their feedback, second step is to show the features and functionalities of our platform adapted to their needs.

During the advanced negotiations phase, we aim to underline our concrete support and value:

,

May 2019

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AuditComply: Improving Quality by Mi ga ng Risks

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ith every second passing, the requisite of an adequate risk and performance management platform is substantially increasing. Along with maintaining its steady growth, an organization must focus on investing more of its resources in developing a legit platform that looks after the overall performance of an organization. It’s quite essential for an organization to maintain a healthy ambience in the workplace. AuditComply, a risk and performance management platform, addresses such complexities, and offers inventive solutions to boost the growth of the company. It mainly focuses on monitoring risks and tackles uncertainty for highly regulated industries such as Automotive, Food & Beverage, Healthcare, Aviation and Manufacturing. With a global recognition, it has rooted it’s flagships in countries like UK, EU, US, Middle East and Asia Pacific regions.

Offering Proactive Solutions With AuditComply, compliance is made easy in highly programmed environments by allowing organizations to meet the needs of their internal audit programs, customer and regulatory demands such as BRC, HACCP, SQF, FSMA, and FDA & ISO. AuditComply provides performance enhancing functionalities for managing the full audit lifecycle.

Enterprise risk workflows are embedded in the platform for efficient audit execution, and ensuring integration of the audit process with risk and compliance management.

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AuditComply’s system allows end users to conduct any type of audits or assessments, whether Health and Safety, Supply Chain, Risk or Quality assessments. AuditComply manages the issues, actions and outcomes automatically through its issue management workflow embedded in the application.

AuditComply’s products. In just 4 years since its inception, over 3.4 Million issues have been managed on its secure platform. It’s diverse and varied customer base mostly includes some well-known global brands such as Autoliv, Belfast Health & Social Care Trust, Sysco, Hibernia Reit and Bushmills.

AuditComply is utilized by multiple high profile organizations across various industries and has become the first line of defense around any operational uncertainty. AuditComply’s analytic dashboards highlight recurring issues and performance. These analytics allow users to see trends and gives an insight into the root cause of issues within an organization and make it easy to identify and eliminate risk.

Once assessments have been completed, the platform automatically generates and exports Audit and CAPA reports in minutes, significantly reducing time spent writing reports and allowing it to focus more of its attention on the factors most critical to your business.

In December 2017, AuditComply was the first Northern Ireland based technology company to benefit from technology and investment as part of the strategic partnership between First Derivatives and BGF (British Growth Fund). AuditComply is also pleased to announce that it has been awarded with a place on the G-Cloud 10 government framework. This G-Cloud 10 iteration allows public sector organizations, such as the NHS and local councils, to find and compare cloud-based services, removing the requirement for a full tender process. This demonstrates great confidence in AuditComply’s secure platform.

A Well-organized Enterprise Headquartered in Belfast, AuditComply—a global technology company is trusted by many organizations for it’s powerful, scalable, and advanced analytics engine. Currently, more than 50 organizations, including top manufacturing & food brands, utilize

Personifying Competency AuditComply has some authentic perspectives over tackling and stepping ahead of competitors. It has categorized competition into two categories, firstly, large on-premise bespoke systems provided by large software vendors whereas, second group merely focuses on mobile first form builders.

On-premise bespoke systems require extensive configuration and bespoke coding to map to the client’s environments. Long rollout and deployment cycles, are inherently expensive to maintain with poor user experience. Hence most customers revert to Excel/Word and Sharepoint and ultimately lose the ability to manage consistently at scale across its real-estate.

Besides, being a lightweight approach, the simple check listing becomes quite easier as compared to others. Yet, it lacks some enterprise workflow and analytics required to operate in big industries. Due to lack of adequate enterprise management and configuration, establishing a real-time risk managing business structure becomes quite a challenge for organizations; making implementation a need rather than a want.

AuditComply has implicated various technical as well as technological aspects in order levitate the growth rate to its utmost heights. Its unique ideologies and methods have actively assisted the company in overcoming above challenges.

A Forerunner with a Distinctive Approach Kevin Donaghy, the CEO of AuditComply, is passionate about solving global industrial problems. He firmly believes that managing risks and compliances of large organizations still remains a key challenge in the real-time industry, spanning all the verticals. To this end, AuditComply is driven by the opportunities and challenges and one that they truly have an innovative solution to. AuditComply can and will shape the future of enterprise risk management adding value on day one for our clients and ultimately building a platform that allows for digital transformation whilst enabling business process optimization.

Kevin also happens to be a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics. He has led teams and companies from the earliest stages of development through commercialization and hypergrowth phases. He started his career with WPDS in San Diego, as a software engineer focused on Equipment Configuration Management systems for air forces across the globe. He quickly progressed to run multiple teams for Spirent Communications both in Ireland and the US. In 2007, he founded Replify, which merely focused on mobility optimization and virtualization.

Throughout his impeccable journey, Kevin has achieved a series of successes and has contributed some notable work for enhancing the business.

Being Optimistic AuditComply envisions being the best SaaS based risk assessment organization in the upcoming years. With a great vision and compassion over the requirement of risk and performance management platform, AuditComply can truly transform and manage risk in real-time for large organizations.

Its software platform embraces change seamlessly to meet daily needs, promote visibility, reduce costs and drive operational performance whilst anticipating and managing risk. With

Kevin Donaghy CEO

We are shaping the future of risk management.

improved investigation of business and on-going assessment, better internal quality control and better custom service, the company solely believes in bringing about a revolution in the risk management industry.

Words of Satisfaction “AuditComply is playing a crucial role in changing the quality and compliance culture. A world-class system, a game changer in our industry. We required a solution that was mobile, automated our data and could be accessed in real time to ensure we are meeting quality standards across the supply chain” - Johnny Elgin, Sysco “AuditComply’s solution has greatly improved our productivity for both internal audits and production checklists. We found assistance in moving our existing audits to their solution excellent and seamless. For the little support we have required since moving, their response times and resolutions have been exceptional.”

- Michael Caughey, Bushmills

May 2019

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CheckVentory Innova on: Enabling Efficient Inventory Management for Organiza ons

I

n an interview with Insights Success, Adrian Walsh, the CEO of CheckVentory Innovation, shares insights over the organizations delivery of reformative inventory auditing and management solutions through their cloud based platform, CheckVentory, crafted precisely for the automotive and machinery inventory segments. He also comments upon the company’s journey so far and also its vision of a global ascension.

Following are the highlights of the interview: Give a brief overview of the company, its solutions and services?

CheckVentory was founded specifically to address the risks associated with the lack of validation and certainty in the vehicle distribution process. As the name suggests, CheckVentory is a cloud based platform to check inventory. It enables Banks, Distributors and Dealer groups to easily audit their vehicle inventory, anywhere, anytime and by anyone.

Many people don’t realise that the nice shiny cars and machinery that are displayed on dealer forecourts are not generally owned by the dealerships, they are on funding from banks or distributors. And if you are a funder, the further you are removed from the asset you are funding, the greater the perceived risk, which limits funding.

20 | May 2019

CheckVentory eliminates these risks by giving funders and dealers certainty over the assets via our robust auditing platform.

CheckVentory is made up of two distinct elements, a mobile app for collecting/counting the assets and a web portal for managing, reconciling and reporting on all the audit information. The CheckVentory Solution enables funders to lend with less risk and their customers to access credit.

How do you diversify your Audit Management solutions in ways that would benefit your clientele?

Our solution is designed specifically for the automotive and machinery inventory segments, it’s a bit of a niche so we focused on building a solution for purpose. We have refined the core auditing process, so it is extremely robust but have added broader functionality to cater for the nuances of diverse customers. Where we engage with a client and uncover an improved process or output, we turn that into a report or feature for all clients to benefit.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

When we first started engaging with customers, we were all about addressing their perceived risks, they were dictating what they wanted from us. But through our deep engagements and consistent methodology we have been able to convert risks into opportunities. By providing transparency and validated data, we have been able to act as a “bridge of trust” between lenders and borrowers, enabling commerce to grow.

While we are a relatively young company, all of the management team are veterans of either the Automotive, Banking or Tech industries, we draw deeply from our domain experiences but work in an agile manner to avoid the bureaucracy and procrastination that we all experienced earlier in our careers. We apply this same nononsense approach to our product development.

How does CheckVentory contribute towards making the contemporary Audit Management industry better?

We make auditing a net contributor to the business not just a control. For many of our clients, auditing has generally been done by a few select people, often just from the accounts department. It is frequently done purely to tick a box for a governance requirement. Accountants make great auditors, but it is not the best use of their time. By utilizing non-specialist staff, they can audit larger volumes, more efficiently and frequently, enabling them to stand back from the process to discover an extremely rich source of business intelligence, enhancing their operations well beyond their initial governance requirements.

Where does CheckVentory Innovation see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

Our solution is already translated into multiple languages and deployed in multiple markets.

We integrate with many of the leading back end wholesale finance and dealer management systems as well as other auxiliary systems. Many of our customers are multinationals and we want to see CheckVentory become the benchmark for vehicle auditing, globally.

Adrian Walsh CEO

Check Ventory eliminates risks for funders and their customers, enabling credit to flow and profits to grow.

Considering the rising number of Audit Management solution providers, how does CheckVentory Innovation stand out from its competitors?

We have always taken a holistic view of the auditing process and we ensure that all stakeholders get a benefit from our audits.

This has enabled us to scale organically, dealers want to use our software to identify their operational risks but in doing so they can also resolve the financial risks for their funders, all from the same audit.

Reflections of Delivering Quality “The first CheckVentory audit took a fifth of the time of our normal audit and was reconciled within a day.” – HQ Controller for a UK Nationwide Automotive Group “We simply couldn’t have grown our book as quickly as we did if we were not using CheckVentory to manage the risk.” – Wholesale Risk Manager, European Captive Bank

“We want to be able to deal with even the smallest of dealers, without CheckVentory, that would be too expensive.” – Dealer Credit Manager, European Floorplan Bank “We thought we had a good auditing process, CheckVentory challenged us to audit using their platform, 2 minutes into reviewing the results and I was sold. We now audit our entire network simultaneously and monthly to ensure our (improved) processes are being followed. This has resulted in far greater efficiencies and profit opportunities.” – Group CEO, Major Automotive Group

May 2019

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Entrepreneur Echo System

Sustaining Entrepreneurial Spirit in the

Modern E a

B

usinesses operate, survive and progress in a highly dynamic economy, where change is the rule, not the exception. The change may be slow, sudden or almost extensive. One of the important forces of change is the change in technology. Most of these changes are used to enhance human capabilities to accomplish meaningful work. These changes are sometimes thriving on the entrepreneur. A successful entrepreneur works to visualize these future changes rather than waiting for it and create a more desirable environment in the organization.

Technological breakthroughs do occur and it takes courage for an entrepreneur to accept the change and its implication. Technology breakthroughs like computers, color television sets, electronic sets, fuel-efficient vehicles, etc. have encouraged entrepreneurs to manufacture these products. Thus changes in technology from time to time pose several alternatives before the entrepreneur. This is an ongoing process in which the entrepreneur sets goals and strategies to meet changes in technology. But for strategies like marketing, human resource, supply chain, financial and legal strategies, etc. connection with people is important. Entrepreneurs define the formal relationships among people and specify both their roles and responsibilities. Because the end product is an integrated system of people & technology and to administer these systems, entrepreneur is required.

24 | May 2019

Technology is helping us solve problems where human power alone is not enough. Different types of businesses require different technologies, but again, it is impossible to solve all integration needs with a single technology.

This article will help you understand, that technology is only the part of the original solution and how in different sectors the entrepreneur’s surrounding really matters.

Accounting Technology allows us to complete tasks faster. It replaces the tiresome tasks of manually storing, compiling, sorting, etc. and the ability to use data with a simple digital solution. For example, Sales ledger in the early days was time-consuming, expensive and all paper-based process. Technology helped increase productivity with the development of spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel. Employees today are far better at finding what they need when they need it. Though only this will not achieve the outcome. Here, let’s take a clear look at how the entrepreneur’s spirit is really helping to achieve the desired goal.

Ÿ

Technology is good for bringing the change not forcing it. It cannot make employees more efficient. Yes, the right technology can help to make the work easier, but if an employee is truly falling behind or is just inefficient, all the technology in the world will not solve this situation. The truth is such employees can be sometimes

inefficient due to either inexperience or laziness. An entrepreneur can identify this problem by improving communication in such departments. This explains why human interference is important to address this situation, where technology is just a bandage, fix the problem for a short time. Adding new and faster technology will not fix the problem. While a better solution is sitting the departments down together and talking about the problem with the entrepreneur will be a real solution.

Retail Technology allows retailers to be available day and night interacting with customers how, when and where they are ready to shop. Retailers depend on technology to manage inventory, track customer-purchasing habits, predict trends and deliver goods and services. Wireless communication, QR codes and Augmented Reality are some of the changes in technology to the retail industry.

Ultimately, the entrepreneurship element remains central even if it is embedded within AI, advanced analytics, etc.

Because a customer’s shopping experience is more

Ÿ

important than price and product quality. Entrepreneur encourages employees to use their creativity to ensure every customer experience is memorable. Entrepreneur’s human interaction adds the value to the company and maintains loyal customers.

Communication In virtual workplaces, employees can interact and develop ideas by connecting through the use of video conferencing. This may include training and important meetings from far places to the employees. Technology can also be used as real-time feedback from the employees which allows the entrepreneur to improve the needs of the employees. Entrepreneur’s good communication is necessary to allow efficient flow both internally (among employees) and externally (using technology).

Ÿ

Automation The robots are coming and can actually help us, to be more productive, freeing us from most of the timeconsuming

Ÿ

May 2019

| 25

and repetitive tasks. One of the most important areas of application of automation is computer-aided manufacturing. Today CAD/CAM technology has been applied in many industries including machine components, electronics products, and equipment design.

Even banking and financial institutions have embraced automation technology in financial transactions. But just because technology is advancing it does not mean it will replace human. Technology can do an adequate job, but we still need humans. It is certain that people to people communication remains fundamental where the entrepreneur’s contact in the various stages is required.

Security Technology becomes even more critical when operating the business online. It is important to protect the businesses from cybercriminals who could steal data or lead to website downtime. Encryption and decryption protect information from being accessed by a third party or cybercriminals. It takes only about a minute without slowing down any file or document.

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Storage Technology has led to the development of cloud computing to store business information and has been accepted by many in the world of business. Cloud

Ÿ

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Computing is cost effective and convenient to the company management and employees can access data from anywhere by just using a device that can access the internet. It helps entrepreneurs to trust these technologies and build a strong trust among internal management of the company.

Overall Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain technology, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, 3D printing, etc. today are helping entrepreneurs to use this technology in every field to grow their businesses. But technology alone cannot create a company culture, where human interactions are valued. Because it is people who are assigned to work on this technology and to encourage them the entrepreneurs keeps their spirit alive. By creating an interested working environment, interactive dialogues among employees, support and motivation to the employees, reward system, etc. reflects the culture of the company. It is an entrepreneur who understands what the needs of the company are, by creating a connection with all the stages of management that brings the desired output. Hence, entrepreneurial spirit and technology should go hand in hand. Therefore we need evolving technology as well as intelligent humans. We need guided missiles as well as guided men to create the better world.

DQS Inc.: Adding Value beyond Cer fica ons

P

ursuing important certifications is a significant task to dignify a business’s professionalism and qualitative performance. They are defined by the degree of confidence which customers and markets rely on. DQS Inc., a third-party Certification Body (CB), was formed with an objective of making businesses more competitive.

With over 25 years of experience, DQS is recognized as a premier provider for registrations to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 13485, ISO 50001, AS 9100, IATF 16949, ISO 27001, and GFSI Standards, to name a few.

Additionally, DQS can perform supplier audits and other assessments on a non-certification basis. The business was originally started by Underwriter’s Laboratories as UL Management Systems Solutions. In order to provide geographic coverage and enhance its market position, UL MSS merged with DQS GmbH in 2008 and ranks among the leading certification bodies in the world.

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Tailor made Solutions In addition to offering standards in multiple markets, DQS is able to offer integrated audits, auditing two or more sets of audit criteria at the same time. This eliminates redundancy for clients and checks for the consistency among management systems. The company also provides non-certification audits that are tailored to clients’ specific needs, such as to make sure all locations and employees are following protocols or to audit a supply chain to increase transparency.

still remains a major shareholder in its business.

Like DQS suggests for its customers, it is continually improving its processes. This allows the company to enhance its business practices for its clients. During a recent brand research project, current customers named some strengths DQS had.

One customer mentioned, “What I value is their knowledge, their expertise. They don’t always agree with me, but I accept their decisions because I respect them. I guess that’s it. I respect them.”

Enhancing Business Practices Since DQS came together 10 years ago, it has worked through issues, such as setting up and improving upon its own internal processes.

During the same timeframe, it also worked through the issues of the financial crisis in 2008 that strongly affected the markets it serves. In 2015, the company rebranded globally from UL DQS Inc. to DQS Inc. to unify branding, though UL

Another customer said, “That they really know whatever service they

are providing, they excel at knowing that product or knowing that service…. And, they really provide value to our company when they provide that service, they really provide that value.”

Exemplifying Proficiency The team at DQS is led by Brad McGuire, the President and CEO. He joined DQS at the time of the merger in 2008 and was appointed CEO in early 2017. Brad played a significant role in simplifying and improving its workflows and customer interactions. He has led the company and customers through the revisions of its top four standards. He continues to lead the company in growing the business, ensuring the organization is on top of the latest developments in the markets, and is continually improving its business processes and customer facing activities.

Building Professional Relationships

Brad McGuire President & CEO

DQS certificates are more than a piece of paper. It works with a genuine desire to help its clients improve and comes in with an open mind to take the time to learn each client’s individual business. The company focuses on building longterm relationships, adding value to customers who strive to continuously improve.

DQS takes prides in the quality of its auditors who pursue a passion for what they do and conduct tough but fair audits that truly help clients improve. The company work as a strategic business partner for its clients to help them improve their business with a value-added audit – The True Audit Experience

DQS provides the true audit experience giving an accurate and insigh ul audit conclusion.

we could strengthen our system.” - Charles Marino, Quick Mount PV

Expansion of Services DQS will continue to expand its services to meet client demand. Currently, it is expanding offerings in the food safety, medical, and information technology markets. It will also continue to provide information on standard revisions to prepare current clients for transition audits.

“Overall audit process is a value added exercise that always leads to needed feedback to aid in the improvement process.” - Aaron Cole, Bonnell Aluminum

Satisfied Clientele “Our auditor was extremely knowledgeable and during the audit spent time explaining a number of different ways that

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ECAT: Making Audit Management Easy

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n this era of technology most of the organizations are envisioning a growth path in diligent ways and heading towards a much-needed success. ECAT is also creating a benchmark in the audit management industry. Being a leader of the organization, Francis Lyons, CEO and Co-founder, has shared his insights behind the success of his ECAT in the global arena.

Below are the highlights of the interview between Francis and Insights Success: Give a brief overview of the company, its solutions and services Founded in 2011, ECAT is the most efficient and most effective way to enable people, in all locations, to ensure that all company processes are followed and compliant to standards.

Our simple-to-use audit management solution provides access to the current status that enlightens any organizational path with valuable insights. At ECAT, we have pledged to deliver a robust and effective audit management and process validation tool, empowering enterprises to fight the mesh of expensive, timeconsuming and traditional audit systems and strengthen operational excellence with precise processes.

How do you diversify your Audit Management solutions in a way that could benefit your clientele?

We designed the software to be as open and flexible as possible without losing the ability to structure the collected

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data. In real terms, everything from Health & Safety, Hygiene, Maintenance, Logistics, Warehousing, Manufacturing, Security and more can and does follow a relatively simple flow. The diversity comes by examining the client’s requirements and “fitting” many of their process validation requirements into a relatively standardized solution. The real result here is that across the many business flows, we can help bring together standardized measurements and viewpoints.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

One of my earliest lessons was having spent a lot of time and effort on building one of the most intuitive and “easy to use” interfaces, not many wanted to even look at it, let alone use it. Clients were and still are, very time poor. They simply told us what they wanted and expected that to be delivered. The achievement was in that having been so thorough in keeping the interface simple, it is by default very fast. That allowed our support team to deliver on the clients’ expectations. We assumed that clients would relish building their own audits when in fact, they had no time or inclination to do so. The original concept of handing over a first-class auditing platform and letting the client take it from there couldn’t have been further from the reality. The support team was originally aimed at dealing with software glitches. As it turned out, they morphed into a “how best to build your

audit team”. That to this day, has been one of the single biggest learnings for all at ECAT. How does the company contribute towards making the contemporary Audit Management industry better?

Auditing has moved from Pass or Fail, to a far more, holistic process improvement environment. ECAT has evolved to where it’s not just about capturing what was wrong, it’s about figuring out how to do it better. At the very beginning of this journey, many clients saw auditing as a “necessary evil”. They only audited to satisfy their own clients or systems. Prove that they were actually “earning their keep”.

Then over time, they began to realize that it’s not just about scoring 90% to fulfil an SLA (Service Level agreement). It should be more about “how do we get that last 10%?” It should be about identifying the “good” things and spreading that story. The companies moving towards collaboration are the ones that are distinguishing themselves. We enable our clients to imbue their values both

internally and with their clientele. Along with the traditional ‘Pass/Fail’ model, we now have audits that have no score. No measure out of 100%. The score, in many cases, has become irrelevant in the improvement environment. In many sectors where price can be “a race to the bottom”, the company that competes on inclusivity, transparency and competency over time, will always succeed. ECAT nurtures these values in all the clients it works with.

Give a detailed explanation regarding the Founder/CEO/Management’s influence over the industry and the company?

After almost 3 decades of working with large enterprise companies, process flow has been a constant passion for me. No matter what job you are doing, there is always a sequence or a flow. Creating ECAT emerged from a frustration of doing audits on paper and having to rekey everything into spreadsheets in order to get any useful analytics. We couldn’t find a technology solution to fit our needs. Other companies expressed the same frustrations. Evidently, a flexible, intelligent, easy to use solution to better manage auditing and process validation; without the help of already over stretched internal IT teams was required. ECAT was conceptualized to make it feasible for organizations to get an instant, accurate and real picture of their processes and better manage their operations.

Through a combination of my own experiences and the cumulative wealth of direct client experience gained by the ECAT team, we have revolutionized many companies of all sizes. From SMEs to Fortune 500s with thousands of users by introducing them to easier, quicker and a better approach to auditing.

Where does ECAT see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

I believe that ECAT will become far more integrated in the day to day activities of many companies. As the auditing model continues to move from one person performing periodic inspections, to everyone continuously evaluating, ECATs roll in collecting, collating and disseminating that information via the internal existing company’s channels will become integral. My hope is that ECAT becomes far more embedded within companies and in the future, ECAT should simply become “part of the furniture” for many progressive companies.

Considering the rising number of Audit Management solution providers, how does ECAT stand out from its competitors?

ECAT is the simplest way to seize auditing success with valuable ROI and actionable data-rich insights. Our solutions help to save up to 60% in audit time and enhance operational efficiency by 30%. With such strong platform capabilities, our cloud-based audit management solution helps to turn complexity into flexibility whilst enjoying better productivity, quality and efficiency. It has been tried, tested and trusted by

Francis Lyons CEO & Co-founder

We’re not just a diverse group of minds coming together. We are well known for our customer obsessed a tude backed with transparency, quality and a zeal to Comply.

world’s leading organizations like Penske, Tesco, and Sodexo among others.

Our multi-lingual support, intuitive dashboards, fast and easy reports, improved visibility, transparency and traceability help to get the real picture of the state or status of anything. Simply put, ECAT drives sustainable excellence for our clients- and that makes us different.

Probably the single most important factor about ECAT however is the support. We pride ourselves on knowing all our clients directly. We know how to guide them because we know their business. We will travel to their place of work and help them understand what they need. We will help build their audits and recommend changes where necessary. Ultimately, we know each other by name and we deal with it there and then.

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Expert’s Outlook

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About the Author Steven Minsky is the CEO of LogicManager and author of the RIMS Risk Maturity Model. Steven is a patent author of risk and process management technology. He has 30 years of business and technology experience.

Prior to LogicManager, he co-founded RulesPower.

He holds MBA and MA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and The Joseph H. Lauder Institute of International Management.

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Quali ze, Inc: Simplifying Lives, Delivering Value

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n an interview with Insights Success, Chandra Shekar, the founder and CEO of Qualityze, shares insights over the organizations provision of a reformative cloud-based enterprise quality management solutions which are highly configurable and deliver ease of usage. He also notes upon the company’s ceaseless expedition and also its foresight of a global ascent.

Salesforce.com technology strengths like analytics, Chatter, IoT, Community Portals, AI; along with our next generation user interface, keeps our customers competitive and able to achieve greater success through quality while we continue to be focused on staying current with the industry regulatory, compliance and certification process changes; it’s a great combination.

Following are the highlights of the interview:

How do you diversify your Audit Management solutions in ways that would benefit your clientele?

Give a brief overview of your company, its solutions and services?

Innovative businesses are focused on customer-centric approaches to doing business in this competitive environment. Qualityze on the Salesforce platform is a game changer for quality systems going forward.

With its Next Generation Enterprise Quality Management Solution (EQMS), Qualityze prepares its customers for competitive changes on the horizon while enabling them to solve traditional quality issues without being concerned about technology.

Salesforce.com offers a secure development platform that leverages a comprehensive portfolio of services, such as automation of sales force tasks, customer service, marketing, analytics, application development, collaborative productivity tools, IoT and professional cloud services. Harnessing

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We have done that by making the solution highly configurable; meaning having the ability to add ad-hoc tasks to a preconfigured workflow in minutes not hours. Change/Hide/Add filed labels in the same amount of time.

Uploading your existing checklists, working off-line to complete them, planning, scheduling, executing, and managing your findings while easily tracking all of your audits, is what it is all about.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

We avoided outdated technology models that are more expensive to develop, maintain and deploy. These old technologies encourage customizations that are expensive to maintain and not needed when a highly

configurable alternative is available, and that is aligned with global regulatory, compliance and certification bodies. These are the lessons learned from our extensive experience in quality management practices in the Lifescience industries for the past 20 years.

How does your company contribute towards making the contemporary Audit Management industry better?

There has been a quantum leap in technology in the last ten years and continuing to use applications that look and act like an excel database will no longer be accepted by the next generation of end users. It is more about how your user interface compares and drives like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. With a Salesforce lighting enabled user interface, Qualityze brings together a whole new application interface experience that embraces these trends with the ability to easily integrate future AI and IoT requirements into its core products.

Where does Qualityze see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?

“There is a huge opportunity to elevate quality to a strategic discipline.” As an

industry leader, Qualityze will continue to expand and offer a unified quality centric source of truth that delivers accelerated leadership visibility to identify quality trends, mitigate risk, enforce accountability and drive continuous product or process improvements among all industries. We are attacking the status quo and are positioning ourselves to be the leader in Quality Management software solutions.

Could you highlight one of Qualitize’s use cases to justify its position in the market?

Qualityze worked with a multibillion-dollar enterprise organization to reduce manual efforts and improve the accuracy of information gathered for their quality management system.

Qualityze helped connect their customers through a quality portal. Previously, customers communicated with the company through phone calls, emails, or even postcards, now they have thousands of customers communicating through this portal to provide qualitative records of the products utilized. This reduced the client’s cycle time by 70-80 percent while allowing consumers to analyze the products and provide feedback. This led to a reduction in intensive labor and high risks from the manual systems. Qualityze EQMS integrated with enterprise CRM and ERP applications in just weeks bringing manufacturers and its customers to interact closely with a customer-centric approach.

We seek customers that are looking to create, maintain and expand a “Culture of Quality”, by including everyone in the organization to improve product and consumer outcomes through leveraging “best in class” quality processes. Our superior quality processes are developed, maintained and updated by staying aligned with best practices endorsed by industry experts such as ASQ, ISO and the FDA. A Deeper Insight Having worked as a quality management consultant and industrial leader for more than 20 years, Chandra Shekar has experienced that regardless of industry, companies can differentiate themselves with a commitment to excellence and maintaining an environment that supports a culture of quality.

With a keen focus to bring next-generation technology into today’s quality space, Chandra Shekar has laid the foundation to simplify customers’ lives and promote positive product and customer outcomes.

Chandra Shekar Founder & CEO Our solu ons help organiza ons manage quality, compliance and regulatory issues, develop and maintain good quality policies, procedures and processes that op mize day to day quality opera ons.

processes and incorporates a cost-effective implementation methodology to truly simplify and lower the cost to install a quality management system.

The solution has been designed to be naturally intuitive, easy to implement, deploy and maintain.

“Qualityze was born with the intention to engender a culture of quality that provides value to our customers,” Chandra expresses. The company has successfully partnered with Salesforce.com to provide its customers the best technology platform to ensure the security, scalability, performance, and reliability the market requires. Utilizing Salesforce.com features such as Community Portals, analytics, Chatter, IoT, AI with a Lightning-enabled user interface Qualityze enables its customers to achieve greater success through creating and maintaining a superior quality focus.

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From Editor's Desk

The Journey to Self-Discovery ntrepreneurs set up their new ventures with a new and unique vision, goal, and its future. These entrepreneurs face many challenges over the course of their journey. However, financial challenge is the most painful ones they have to face. Making a list of all the financial challenges can aid a business and a new starting player in attaining sustainability and economic stability.

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which can help them in engaging new customers and create a productive business pipeline. Players can also avoid inadequate working capital by cutting-costs up to twenty percent and set the cut out as the working capital. For the startups that are yet to make profits, should make sure that they are adequately financed before taking any harsh decision, which can affect their survival in the industry.

The Small Business Association estimates that around forty-four percent of startups and small business survive at least for four years only. Others cite that poor capital management, overspending, and the lack of reserve funds are some of the common reasons behind a business closure.

All these three terms come under the finances of a company.

One way to address the financial problems is to use the 4R formula i.e. Review, Revamp, Research, and Rewrite the company’s business plans. By using this formula, they can take action against the things that are not working out.

Non-consistent Cash Flow Issue Most of the project-based business relies on their cash flow, which further relies on the flow of the project and the services rendered. It is therefore important for the company to have a good business team ready to connect new and reliable clients and projects. For the company that does not rely on the cash flow, must construct a flow of consistent cash flow at the proper time. If the client is unavailable to pay on-time, the businesses should think newer methods of client engagement. They should be patient and make decisions that would help them while dealing with the clients in the future.

Working Capital Issue Startups have to wait for their big clients to pay up so that they can manage their expenses. Entrepreneurs must save at least the expenses of six months as its working capital,

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Another way of improving the cash flow is to get a down payment for the product and the services provided. This

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down payment will aid the companies in covering the expenses associated with the project sales and profit margins. Firms can also set a day in the week to go through the accounts, payables, and checks.

Bookkeeping Issue Corporations can hire organized bookkeepers, which can save a lot of time. If they cannot find one, they can give this responsibility to one of its team member. The firm can improve by distinguishing the discretion and non-discretion spending. These include rent, office overhead, inventory purchases, and wages. The companies can even save further by polishing their overall marketing plans. Identifying and creating a larger clientele that can develop marketing strategies can help in promoting the service and products.

Firms must set goals and expectations for marketing initiatives and develop the tools to improve the revenue outcomes.

Wrong Predictions and Revenue Issue Businesses on a day-to-day basis have to predict the company’s revenues. This is even truer for the businesses that are dynamic in nature. Most of the predictions can be measured on a month-to-month basis. Although a lot of factors that are dependent upon the revenue prediction, but mostly it rely on the relevancy of the business. By foreseeing accurately, the firms can generate good revenue that is crucial for the cash flow statements. By paying attention to the seasoned fluctuations and affected timelines, they can predict the revenues accurately.

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Hiring Issue Hiring a good staff is not an easy task. A decision like overhiring can create additional costs for the company in contracts and long-term employee liabilities. The employer is responsible for its employees and they have to provide them with the employee benefits that increase the costs. The key solution lies in hiring the term-based employees, freelancers, and independent contractors as they will provide services only for the time worked and employer do not have to add payroll costs in paying them. These independent contractors are paid only for their time spent on the work. Depending upon the job, firms can easily find out that whether these are perfect for the job or not. In return, these can absorb the work-related wages and can add the benefit of costs.

In eliminating the conundrums, the mind-power and descision-making of the entrepreneurs is important. They can seek loans and grants which are specifically tailored towards boosting the company’s finances. Even some of the vendors allow the company to offer their assistance and can refine the business debts. The players should not haste in making a decision. They should be thoughtful and intellectual for deciding the expenses. It is important for them to think strategically. They should be aware of their decisions and should seek guidance in decision-making and in expenses.