In case your business is facing an external review such as an attensation, quality certification, audit, franchise verification or anything else – it may be worth to rely on experienced specialists who can navigate through the course of these reviews.
It is essential that you are aware about the key stages and behavioural aspects of interacting with external reviewers.
More mature companies have dedicated teams who perform activities requested by external reviewer and making sure there is less distraction to the core business and a certain degree of discipline is involved. Even though, the fundamental results of such reviews are not interfered, there may be invaluable benefits when it comes to peripheral areas where ‘shades are grey’:
- discussions on specific details of recommendations and softening the context of any findings and risk statements through clarifications and factual accuracy
- highlighting use-cases of ongoing remediation though internal management activities rather than an independently identified issue
- being proactive in communications and tracking requests/actions and demonstrating mature control culture
- organising and preparing evidence materials and demonstrating high level of records-keeping
- initiating pre-audit reviews and proactively conducting self-assessments to pre-empt any significant review observations
These and other minor details in how to manage external reviews may contribute to the final outcomes of such reviews and help your businesses.