How a Forensic Mortgage Audit Helps You

Many American homeowners are facing losing their homes due to economic factors beyond their control, or life circumstances which pull them into a financial vortex that is impossible for them to solve alone. Worse yet, it is reported that up to 85% of home loans have errors which entitle the home owner to receive a monetary reward from the lender, and rarely any of them know about it. The problem is how to get the loan companies to pay you what you are due.

What good would a forensic mortgage audit do for you?

With much of the mortgage industry lacking any quality control whatsoever, an extremely high percentage of loans have procedural flaws in them, or violated the customers right to disclosure and inquiry in some way or another. What this means for you is that when you get your mortgage audited, you will find out just how your mortgage company exploited your lack of knowledge regarding the mortgage and how they may have violated your rights doing so.

Who can benefit from a forensic mortgage audit?

Anyone who is seeking a mortgage modification will benefit from a forensic mortgage audit because they will have a much higher likelihood of receiving their mortgage modification they have requested once the errors the mortgage company made in completing the loan are revealed. The lender would much rather grant the modification than confront the wrong they have done with the loan.

Finally, a second group of people who will benefit from the audit is anyone who is losing their home. Most of these people have the money to pay for the audit, even though it is guaranteed free if it does not reveal any wrong doing, by taking the money they would normally pay on their home and allocating that for the audit. They stand to benefit by receiving money back for the wrong doing by the lender. Most homeowners are unaware that they are due the money and the lender will not tell them, that is for sure!

The author enjoys writing articles about forensic mortgage audits and how to prevent foreclosure. Click on the links above to learn more about these topics!

How to Perfect Your Telecom Audit Process

A Telecom audit is an important process for any organization. Human error, failure to pay close attention to details, constraint of time in checking long telecom bills, and insufficient knowledge of new technology and regulations - these mistakes can take a toll on the revenue of a company. Avoiding all these potential problems is an integral part of the expense management of an organization. Many small losses can add up to a huge amount. In order to curb this waste, organizations can either use an automated telecom audit tool, a Telecom Management professional, or a combination of the two.

Telecom audit is a process that helps to detect and reveal even the smallest errors that waste money. Thus, it provides an opportunity not only to recover lost revenue, but also ensures that errors are not repeated.

Telecom audit ideally has three stages:

Acquiring Documents to Create an Inventory Database

The first stage involves the collection of telecom invoices. These invoices show the costs over time and the customer records. Telecom audit companies at times use software in this stage that both acts as a database and helps in analyzing trends.

Depending on the size of your company, just collecting these invoices could be a very time-consuming job. Start with the local phone bills and work outward. The long distance bills may be on the same invoice or billed separately. Wireless services can be billed as a group or individual accounts. Check to see if each bill matches with a known phone. For Internet service bills, they may be on a separate bill or, if the local provider offers broadband with local service, they may be with the local phone invoice.

The next thing to collect is voice and data service contracts. These include local and long distance service, wireless phones, telecom equipment and any maintenance service agreements.

Make the time to request your Customer Service Records (CSRs) from your provider. Your providers may take a few weeks to get to your requests, but it's worth the wait. These records contain your unique data that will ultimately be the foundation of your telecom audit. They are written in Universal Service Order Codes (USOC) and they are an itemized listing of all your lines, services, and features.

You should also gather any agreements for Directory Advertising or Yellow Pages. If your company is large, sometimes a publicity or advertising department handles these agreements. The documents are important because they will specify the rates that apply to all advertising, when it was ordered and by whom.

Other documents to get access to are tariffs. Tariffs are the provider's official documents that break down all the rules, service offers, rates, etc. that they offer. You can find these rules on your provider's website. Also gather any tax information that applies to your company. Charities, schools, churches, and some nonprofit organizations may be exempt from state and/or federal taxes.

Analyzing All the Data

The second stage of audit involves the comparison of inventory costs against pricing plans. And the first thing required is an inventory audit. In this section, you look at your organization's inventory of telecom assets. Instead of looking for spot errors, this kind of telecom audit looks for trend information. This data aids the company in deciding whether it needs to expand its telecom resources or to re-deploy its existing resources.

Now a comparison of cost against pricing plans can be made. Here's where a telecom audit firm can be very helpful. They keep a record of current pricing and tariff changes. With the help of these records and databases, the audit firms can provide a cost effective plan for their clients.

Reporting and Recommendations

The third and crucial stage involves reports and recommendations. If you are doing this audit yourself, after looking at all the data, this is where you decide where you might be able to save money. A telecom audit firm will also give you their reports and recommendations at this time. Along with the presentation of their reports and analysis, they also give their suggestions for improvements and savings that have been identified in the process.

They may find errors in you bills and suggest disputing some charges. They may find credits you never received and apply for refunds for you. Today's telecom bills contain many errors that you won't find unless you do an audit.

Since billing errors play havoc on draining the organization's capital, partnering with companies that provide solutions to check such errors is becoming increasingly popular. When using a telecom-auditing firm, there are two ways to approach it. One of them is the "contingency" method, where the telecom audit firms receive a percentage of the money they saved clients. The second can be a "fixed fee" approach. Generally, small and medium firms go for the contingency process, whereas large firms go for the second approach, as it is easier to manage.

No matter which approach a firm takes, one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that telecom audits should be conducted by both big and small businesses to keep a check on their expenses. The telecom audit process is complex and time-consuming, but fortunately, there are companies that provide such services, and instituting a regular telecom audit can ensure cost optimization for any firm, and almost surely improve its bottom line.

With more than twenty years of experience in planning, implementing, managing and consulting on telecommunications projects, Nermine Shaker has generated millions of dollars worth of savings for her clients. She is a Partner at The Sygnal Group, a Telecommunications Management Company that offers unbiased reporting, analysis and implementation of telecom strategies to businesses of all sizes. http://www.SygnalGroup.com

Beginners Guide to IT Audit Jobs - What IT Auditors Do

If you are new to IT auditing it's important to understand how the process works, what its aims are and how they are achieved.

For an IT auditor they must firstly understand the business. While a company's business model might not at first seem connected to their computer network, in many ways it is. How they run their business should be reflected in their IT provision. Two businesses operating in the same sector may well be selling the same products, to the same customers, but they might interact with their systems in completely different ways. You might rely on certain aspects more; a failure in that area could be far more significant for you than it would be for a competitor or vica versa.

It's also important to understand the threats to the company. By understanding the risks, an IT auditor is better able to assess the situation and make recommendations. You would need to understand the company's vulnerabilities and its dependencies to truly understand the threats. To many people they may see their only IT threat as that of hackers. Some people may overestimate the risk assuming an illuminati of hackers of plotting to bring down their website or internal network. There are indeed risks of such a threat but what would motivate the action? If this kind of threat were to materialise it might be because of an ethically questionable competitor, yet it's not hugely common. It is the job of the IT auditor to assess this risk, understand the current vulnerabilities and recommend action based both on the need and the cost.

Dependency is another factor IT auditors have to take into account. Does the business rely on an order system containing all their customers' details & financial records on a creaky computer with no back-up strategy? Could the failure of a small low cost item in the system result in much larger costs from lost business? The IT auditor has the responsibility to find these potential problems and help the company solve them.

The next stage for the auditor is the testing of the processes and protection the company has in place. It might be a case of checking every cable leads to a computer, or that every unit is using a safe password or that the firewall is up to scrutiny. By doing this you can see if the protection the company thinks they have in place is actually up to scratch.

It's difficult for auditors as often they have to interact with systems administrators and other members of the company. These employees can often feel the auditor is being unnecessarily critical of their work. If you are thinking of becoming an IT auditor you will have to be quite diplomatic in your assessment. Their co-operation will make your work far easier so keeping them onside is important.

If you know the ins and outs of IT systems and are inquisitive by nature a job in IT auditing could be just the thing you were looking for.

Jonathon Hickstead writes for Careers in Audit, a jobs site specialising in IT Audit Director jobs and recruitment.

For more information visit Careers in Audit for more audit jobs

Ease Your Audit Preparation With an Automated Document Control

Organizations operating in a regulated environment continually face the daunting task of managing volumes of documents and achieving a positive audit score during inspections. With the growth of competition and regulatory pressure, many companies may come across an unexpected inspection by authorities such as the US FDA. In such instances, ensuring effective document management and a reliable audit trail can help in preparation at short notice as documents and processes are the pillars of a sound enterprise-wide quality system.

One of the key issues that surfaces in relation to a poor audit score is the lack of synchronization between documents or underlying processes and actual change management. For instance, in many cases, due to multiple locations or suppliers, a change in the document may not result in the actual change in the process. This can easily result in non-compliance to a documented process and thus a negative inspection outcome following an audit. Effective document management demonstrates the organization is following the industry best practices across a wide range of activities and departments.

This article sheds light on the features of an effective document control system that plays a critical role in raising the audit preparedness.

1. A document system that offers document control in a secure environment: With the introduction of an electronic document system, you can fully automate the document life cycle while ensuring secure access to critical information. The system acts as a controlled document repository and offers automation features such as templates library, document revision control, electronic signatures, easy document search facilities, notifications, escalations and approvals - all of which result in an effective audit trail and traceable document history.

2. A web-based document control system for remote access: As the supplier and customer networks expand around the globe, many document systems fail due to their inability to provide a mobile document management solution. These 100% web-based, document control solutions are designed to allow the field auditors and suppliers to trigger a process change in real-time, attach the evidence documents to a non-conformance, remotely access, and fill in the audit questionnaire that elicits a change in the process. This reduces time and errors in transcribing the documents and carrying out the actual change.

3. A centralized document control solution that integrates with training management across the enterprise: A well-developed document control system can seamlessly integrate with processes and trigger a process change throughout the organization, be it a change in the manufacturing process or supply chain process, a comprehensive document control system will alert the affected departments and trigger training requirements. These training requirements could be for the personnel directly involved, or to enhance the competencies required for an audit type. A tight integration between document control system and staff training management can assist in enhancing the audit score.

Conclusion

By integrating a document control system with the organization's core processes and other business areas, organizations can significantly enhance their audit preparedness. A robust document control system is the backbone of flawless audits and a high audit score - all of which will undoubtedly result in motivated, success driven employees and happy customers!

Kanupriya is a copywriter for Proquis. Proquis offers web-based compliance management and process mapping / analysis software. Proquis software provides enterprise-wide automation of processes, complete audit trail and an efficient document change management. Visit http://www.proquis.com to request a live demonstration of Proquis software.

Home Energy Services - Why Every Home Should Have an Energy Audit

Regardless of the type of home you live in, there are ways to improve your home to make it more efficient. With a few tweaks here and there, houses, both new and old, can be improved and can save homeowners a considerable amount of money each year. Think about how much money you spend on energy services each year:

? Do you think there are actions you could take to reduce energy consumption and your electricity bill?

? Do you know of any issues related to your home that you need to address but have yet to?

? Do you know how much money per year you could save by simply making a few small changes in your home?

? Do you know what steps to take to make your home more efficient?

Homeowners can easily find all the answers to these questions through a home energy audit. While some will advocate that you can do it yourself, it is best to leave it to the professionals. You may be able to do the basic quick fixes around the house, but the professionals will find the best methods to improve your homes efficiency.

For most homes, an energy audit will be the first step in the sustainability journey. And, the truth is that every home should have an energy audit. The results of the audit could make a huge difference in your utility bills.

How does an energy audit work?

An energy audit on your home involves going over it in detail in search of energy inefficiencies. Home energy service companies will conduct a comprehensive assessment with the aid of diagnostic instruments to identify potential areas for improvement. An energy audit can take between 2-6 hours depending on the size of your home and the issues that are discovered. Some of the assessments include:

? An inspection of all relevant equipment and appliances

? An analysis of your utility bills

? An Assessment of the building envelope's heat transfer and air flow

? An Analysis of the impact of occupancy, use, and weather on the building

? An Inspection of all windows, doors, and other fenestration

Once the assessment is completed, home energy service companies will perform an analysis of the data they have collected and create a report of their findings. Based on these findings, a customized

sustainability project plan will be developed for your home. This plan will take into account your budget, needs, and specifics related to your home.

Advantages of getting a home energy audit

There are a number of advantages to having an energy audit performed on your home:

? You could become eligible for tax rebates and financial incentives to aid with installation of green solutions for your home.

? You could considerably decrease your energy bill

? You'll receive professional recommendations on how to increase your home's efficiency

? Improving your home's energy inefficiencies will pay for itself relatively quickly

For more great information and tips on Home Energy Services, please visit http://www.ecosmartsolutionsltd.com.

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Importance of a Forensic Loan Audit When Doing a Short Sale

Forensic Loan Audit is one of the measures that makes way to a fair and unbiased treatment of lenders to the people who avail their loan. Because of their work that analyzes the agreement and contract between them, they can easily find violations and can easily help those people who experienced fraud and fake agreements. It is important that we know all of these because we might be a victim of these lenders that will always take advantage of you whenever you are badly in need of money. But the thing is, it is also important when you are doing a short sale. You may raise your eyebrow now but the thing is, it is really essential especially nowadays that financial problem is the major problem faced by many.

Short sales by stores are done because of the fact that the competition is getting tougher and they want to get as many customers as possible. But sometimes, the reason behind is that they need additional money because of their other expenses. That is why most of the time, they will resort to loans and asking help from lenders. But the problem is, sometimes, they are not assured that they will have a safe transaction. This is where the importance of forensic loan audit comes in. They will ensure that you will get a fair agreement by deeply analyzing the agreement between you and your lender. They will research more and look deeper on the documents that you will present and the details that you will give them. In this way, they will have a closer and broader look on the situation and they can easily assess if your lender does a violation against the federal laws.

This is important especially if you are in a budget constraint. This will help you make sure that your investment is safe and that you are not wasting your money paying unnecessary payments where in fact, you should only pay a small amount compared to what your lender is imposing. Forensic loan audit is really important if you want to achieve a safe agreement with a lender and to make sure that when you do a short sale, you are not wasting effort and money. Forensic loan audit is being done by group of professionals and there are soft wares existing that can help you to figure out if your lender is violating any laws.

Now is the perfect time for you to know all of these because these are important in this industry. Since you know now this information, you may now use forensic loan audit in your advantage and you will see the effects on your loan endeavors. You will never have a problem with forensic loan audit!

Bill Taylor is a real estate professional who wants to educate people on their options when foreclosure looms. The banks do make mistakes and from 2002-2006 over 82% of the loans originated during that time have some type of problems. Get educated and get informed. Check out our website http://blog.yourfreeloanmod.net/ and get your forensic loan audit done.

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Security Audit - Potential Problems

Security audits help organizations find weaknesses in their security. Security auditors do this by collecting and analyzing data about an organization's hardware, software and security policies. The audits point out vulnerabilities in the network and suggest ways to eliminate these vulnerabilities. With what they learn from the audits, organizations can improve their security and protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their digital information. For that reason, security audits are a vital part of organizational management.

However, security auditing can cause problems when not performed well. Security audits can interrupt the routine of the organization. They can become overly annoying, expensive, and disruptive. When performed poorly, the problems of security auditing can negate the benefits.

Although poorly performed security audits can cause problems, these security audits are too crucial to simply not perform.

To ensure the value of security auditing, you need to avoid any negative side-affects of your audits. You have to make sure that your security auditing disrupts day-to-day business as little as possible. You want to ensure that the audits do not get in the way of any personnel. Make sure that everyone can do their job as normal as possible. When installing and running computer auditing software, make sure that the software does not use excessive computer resources and that it does not slow down the network in any way. Additionally, you want to keep costs down, so avoid needless expenses.

Using quality software to assist and/or perform security audits can greatly help keep the audits as non-disruptive as possible. Security auditing software can often run in the background, so that users of the network may not even notice. Security auditing software can collect security data as well as organize and analyze the data.

When selecting what software to use, read customer reviews. Look for comments about the software's level of disruptiveness. Even software can disrupt business; it can hinder the ability of other essential software programs as well as the activity of personnel. Namely, you want to make sure the auditing software will not overload the network's capacity for data transfer.

Also, you need to make sure the security software is secure itself. Both security auditing software and human auditors access loads of data about the organization that they audit. They have large amounts of security clearances to perform their job. As a result, it is of grave importance to ensure that they can be trusted to keep the data secure. In analogy, you would not hire a security guard who steals. Ironically, poorly designed security auditing software may create more access points for hackers and open your network up to attacks. The best way to determine whether or not a particular software program or auditing company will open you up to attack is to check reviews of previous users of the software or previous clients of the company.

When performed correctly, security auditing will give you the needed information and advice to repair any holes in your organization's computer security. Perform these audits with care to avoid any unnecessary problems.

If you are interested in security auditing software, check Sam Miller new web-site.

Using Your ISO 9001 Audit Checklist

Whether an organization is implementing ISO 9001:2008 or just improving their quality management system, they will undoubtedly need to review and analyse their current systems and processes in order to identify gaps in compliance. Gap analysis requires that organizations review their existing processes, procedures and documentation, etc. The framework for this review technique is often provided in the format of an ISO 9001 audit checklist which many organizations and auditors consider to be an indispensible tool that actively supports the audit process.

The Advantages of the ISO 9001 Audit Checklist

Regular internal audits are carried out to ensure compliance is maintained and the ISO 9001 audit checklist comes in handy for this purpose. This is just one of many tools that are available from the auditors' toolbox that help ensure the audit addresses the necessary requirements. It stands as a reference point before, during and after the audit process and if developed for a specific audit and used correctly will provide the following benefits:

- Ensures the audit is conducted systematically

- Promotes audit planning

- Ensures a consistent audit approach

- Actively supports the organization's audit process

- Serves as an aide memoire

- Provides a repository for notes collected during the audit process

- Ensures uniformity in the performance of different auditors

- Provides objective evidence

Structuring the Audit Checklist

One of the simplest methods of structuring the ISO 9001 audit checklist is by taking the applicable requirements from an organization's policies, procedures and of course, from the standard itself, and turning each requirement into a question. Be sure to include the 'organization shall' requirements as well.

Add a section for comments, add check boxes for compliant or non-compliant and you can even add a column to note objective evidence and to provide an audit trial. Each element of the audit process should have customized checklists to serve as documentation outputs from the audit process itself.

This type of approach is primarily utilised by external auditors, including registration and certification body auditors, but the technique can equally be applied by any organization actively seeking to enhance their audit process.

Adding Value to the Checklist

Organizations should assess the potential value that the ISO 9001 audit checklist can bring in helping their audit process to develop. It's worth remembering that a good checklist is no substitute for an inquiring mind and a good questioning technique.

If an internal auditor uses the checklist to ask narrowly focused questions then little benefit will be derived from the audit. If, on the other hand, the auditors conduct detailed preparation of the requirements of the process they intend to cover during the audit; the checklist then becomes an invaluable output for recording and communicating that preparation work.

Using the ISO 9001 audit checklist should not restrict the scope of audit activities, since that scope may change as a result of information actually collected during the audit. The key to unlocking the checklist's value is the willingness of the organization to use it as a guide rather than being a slave to it.

The ISO 9001 audit checklist and gap analysis tool is ideal for organizations that require a quick and affordable approach to developing a reliable framework for their internal audit process.

Download a free internal audit checklist example courtesy of ISO 9001 Checklist: http://www.iso-9001-checklist.co.uk/internal-audit.htm

The SHELL Audit - A Skills Assessment and Auditing System For Business and Personal Success

The S.H.E.L.L. Audit is a skills assessment and personal strengths recognition system that anyone can use to mine their background for fun and profit. It is a strengths assessment that business managers, executives and small entrepreneurs can use to get more attention, articulate greater value and increase personal and even business income.

For instance, if your whole department or business organization undergoes a SHELL audit, you have a much greater chance of identifying under-utilized intellectual capital that may be used to attract strategic partners or create profitable licensing opportunities.

The SHELL AUDIT Skills Assessment

Since the SHELL Audit is designed to maximize the intellectual capital monetization in formal and informal settings, it often requires that we customize it to the particular context of individual clients. Keep this fact in mind as you read through the subsequent sections describing this unique skills audit process.

Here are the components of the S.H.E.L.L. Audit.

S - Skills And Strengths

One of the easiest ways to begin with this area is to audit your resume and translate your past job descriptions into skills inventory covering the areas of responsibility and know-how that your jobs involved. In the "skills" section, you want to identify both "business" and personal skills.

Categories of skills may include technical and functional "hard" skill sets like:

Programming skills
IT skills
Administrative (office) skills

Or they may include soft skills areas like:

Leadership skills
Management skills
Organizational skills
Problem-solving skills

H - Hobbies And Habits

Your hobbies may be indoor or outdoor hobbies. They may be lifestyle-oriented or may be common to only certain demographics. In this age of information publishing and digital content publishing, many individuals have found ways to turn their hobbies into very lucrative profit sidelines and even full businesses.

Make a list of your hobbies to decide whether you might be able to create a community or content marketing platform around them.

E - Experiences or Epics

Your life experiences (or epics as I call them) can be highly valuable means of creating value in personal or business contexts. Many consultants have been able to build a base of business customers from expertise developed through their personal experiences.

For instance, John Maxwell who is a Christian evangelical pastor has built a worldwide thought leadership and a massive leadership development and consulting organization based on insights and expertise developed from his personal background.

My coaching clients at MarriageInspiration.com have built thriving marriage coaching and communications consulting businesses on the back of a unique epic of marital dysfunction, acrimonious divorce and blissful reconciliation.

L - Learning And Academic Background

Your academic background or your intellectual pursuits can provide the backdrop for identifying and assessing skills that you could package and provide to the marketplace for promotion or profit. Dig through the transcripts of your college career, or through training and certification programs you have completed over the course of your life and see if there are special and valuable skills or competencies that you can identify from them.

L - Loves and Life Missions

Sometimes, an individual's accomplishments and identity are defined by an all-consuming passion or by a philosophy that they adhere to. The example of John Maxwell above is one of those instances where a person leverages their spiritual background to build intellectual assets and skills that he is being paid for today.

What do you love or believe in so deeply that it can inspire you to deliver speeches, write books and create organizations?

Make a comprehensive list of these things and then see if you can match them to any of the other areas of your SHELL or connect them to a specific need in your company or in the marketplace.

Gogo Erekosima, The Small Business Digital Coach is the CEO and Lead strategist at The Idea Age Business Consulting firm, where he developed the S.H.E.L.L. audit for his clients in leadership positions.

He recommends the resources at www.TurnAttentionIntoDollars.com for small businesses (and professionals) seeking to leverage the internet to attract clients, build profitable email lists, generate internet traffic, win influential partners and grow sales in record time.

Tips for a Successful ISO Audit

An ISO quality management or environmental management system audit can be an uneasy and stressful time for many people in companies today. This article gives 16 common sense tips for a successful audit are based on real world experiences consulting with dozens of companies and auditors over the past two decades. These tips apply to ISO 9001; ISO 13485; ISO 17025; ISO 14001; RC 14001; AS 9100 or TS 16949 audits.

In my consulting practice I have observed people at all levels in an organization getting "uptight" or having "audit anxiety" about an ISO registration or continuing effectiveness (surveillance) audit by their registrar. Proper preparation can help lower the anxiety level. These tips can help you and everyone in your organization be better prepared for the audit.

Know your job, roles and responsibilities.
Know where to find the appropriate procedures, forms and documents; It is o.k. to refer to them to answer questions, do not guess. Be sure all forms and records are up to date and completed properly.
Be sure your work area is clean and clutter free; have files, records and information readily accessible.
Know your quality policy and how it applies to your job.
If you don't understand a question, ask the auditor to clarify or repeat the question. If a question is still not clear, then ask someone to help you understand it. It could be a question that should be asked of someone else, if so tell the auditor it is not a part of your job and ask him/her to talk to ask else. Do not guess at an answer.
Answer questions honestly, clearly and concisely. Do not keep on talking after you answer the question. Be aware that whatever you tell the auditor may have to be supported by the appropriate documents or records.
Know what is done with a customer complaint (if it applies to your job).
Know what to do with any non-conforming material (if it applies to your job).
Know that we have a corrective action process and who is responsible for it.
If there are regulatory or special requirements for your job, process or product know and be able to explain them (i.e. FDA, FAA, special handling requirements; soldering; sterilization).
Know the quality objective and/or goals that apply to you.
If there are areas of which you are unsure, do not guess, defer to someone else!
DO NOT ARGUE with the auditor. Questions of the auditor are fine, but don't argue.
Remember, this is not an adversarial situation. Your company is paying the auditor to be there to do his/her job and the auditor is actually a customer. The auditor cannot fine you, send you to jail or get you fired. The auditor is there simply to insure the QMS meets the requirements of the standard.
The auditor will not tell you how to do something, but may say something like "I have seen....." Listen and learn.
Be positive. We have an effective quality system and are a good company. Talk about our successes as appropriate...just be aware that anything said could require documented evidence.

Davis M. Woodruff, PE, CMC is an internationally recognized consultant, professional speaker and author who is an expert in showing companies how to be the low cost, high quality, environmentally responsible leader in their industry. The benefits he brings to his clients include: developing leaders; optimizing resource utilization; improving processes, quality and customer satisfaction; and saving time and $$$. Since 1984 he has served clients in 35 states and on 3 continents. Davis is the author of a full length book Taking Care of the Basics: 101 Success Factors for Managers, and dozens of published articles. He is a 1972 Engineering graduate of Auburn University, a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) and Professional Engineer (PE). His consulting firm, Management Methods based in Decatur, AL, is now in its third decade. Davis can be reached at davisw@managementmethods.com or for more information visit http://www.daviswoodruff.com.

Comprehensive Audit Framework Features

With increasingly rigid compliance laws introduced by the government, companies are also becoming stringent with their security policies and practices. And this stringency is caused by the need for survival in intense competition. The constant demands for better quality standards and value-driven performance are the outcome of vigilant and qualitative compliance methodologies responsible for ensuring safety to the overall environment.

The much talked about GRC framework sets the right parameters for enforcing and ensuring all internal and external compliance regulations. It has become a staple of IT compliant organizations that helps to administer a cohesive, effective and comprehensive process. These three functions are the prime forces that drive the value of a business upwards. Hence it is essentially necessary to ensure conformance to these standards. To ensure the sustenance of quality performance, it is equally necessary to enforce internal audits to have a clear visibility of the current status.

The use of an automated audit process facilitates high efficiency and productivity. These automated audit frameworks can be easily deployed on software-as-a-service model, or an on-premise model or a hybrid of both. It provides end-to-end automation solutions encompassing all security, compliance, audit and risk management needs. The cloud-based audit framework provides complete GRC solutions to businesses of all sizes.

Features of a Comprehensive Audit Framework

* Allows a quick view of the governance, risk and compliance status through its dashboards & provides the status of each unit of the organization, whether local or international and at each level.

* Sends reminders to people to adhere to the compliance standards so that it can detect the areas that are vulnerable and ensure remedial solutions.

* Provides customization facilities to suit business needs and creates exhaustive audit logs of actions that are directly related to compliance.

* Facilitates quick access to various reports relevant to each department such as management, auditing, consultants etc.

* Manages a centralized repository for security regulations maintenance.

* Quickly collects compliance data that gives the correct assessment report through online questionnaires with customizable features for the convenience of customers.

* Performs quick vulnerability scanning of network devices, databases, servers, computers and file systems to identify risks and provide remedial measures.

* Provides an intelligent mechanism where it suggests reporting to the correct authority for law enforcement in case any data lapse or compliance violation is detected.

* Its flexible and integrating feature helps multiple users in different divisions to quickly access solutions.

* Provides pre-canned templates and services on various regulations for compliance enforcement.

* Integrates new amendments & regulations to easily adjust with current regulatory standards.

An integrated and automated audit framework undertakes all the processes pertaining to risk assessments, planning, scheduling, preparation, reviewing, reporting, tracking issues and administration in an efficient manner. Thus it provides a complete, optimized and cost-effective GRC solution.

Know more about - audit logs

vulnerability scanning

Conducting an IT Audit: Industry Compliance and Data Protection

Businesses of all sizes are vulnerable to network attacks, which can result in lost data or funds, fraud, identity theft, lawsuits, a disabled system, or corrupted files. Although small and medium-size companies and organizations are particularly vulnerable, all businesses utilizing an electronic information system for recordkeeping or offering credit card transactions need a network strategy that incorporates risk assessment and management and involves regular IT audits. Losing data can harm your business, but effective network security is also part of industry best practices standards, such as FFIEC and Sarbanes-Oxley for finance and HIPAA for health care. These industry standards require a business or organization to develop and implement a network security strategy that includes regular audits for compliance.

Hackers and online criminals continue to revise strategies for breaching network security and obtaining insider information. The recent WikiLeaks incident is a large-scale security breach, but your system can be damaged by far smaller threats. To find these weak points, also called "vulnerabilities," have an IT audit conducted on your system.

An IT audit examines network security from three angles: physical, technical, and personal. Ethical hacking, vulnerability scanning, and social engineering are common tactics used to identify these weak points. Approaching the network perimeter and interior as an outside party, a white hat, or ethical, hacker attempts to break into a system using common to sophisticated tactics.

As a full assessment of your business's security, an IT audit is conducted through penetration tests, personal interviews, vulnerability scans, examining operating system and network settings, and researching historical data, or past security breaches. A certified ethical hacking professional considers the following factors when analyzing your network:

? Company security policies and their implementation

? Passwords

? Presence of access control lists and audit logs

? Reviewing of audit logs

? Industry practices and security settings

? Removal of, updated, and custom-built applications

? Backup systems

? Data encryption tools

? Configuration and code changes

? Previous security incidents

An IT audit culminates in a report, which details all vulnerabilities inside and on the perimeter of a network. In addition to identifying them, the report provides strategies for fixing these weak areas and strengthening the network.

Audit Management Software For Your Small Business

If you have heard of some type of software that is helping companies in managing their workforce company performance, then you should include the audit management software. This software is going to be very good for higher authorities of a company to audit the companies under them.

So what does audit management software manage? This software can automate the entire auditing process. This includes automation of surveys either down internally or externally through customers. These surveys are very much good for companies as this is the medium for them to hear out their customers and their employees in order to improve their product and performance.

This audit management software will also takes care of planning for auditing throughout the year. This is because the user can easily customize depending on the workflow of the company. And what makes this software very convenient for the user is that assigning of tasks can be done immediately and automatically once the auditing plan gets approved.

And since the purpose of auditing is to check the performance and if the company is going by the set regulations by the government and the upper offices, you can use the audit management software to generate checklists. These checklists can be used in order to make sure that you are compliant with the standards set by the International Organization for Standardization or ISO. Being branded with the ISO standards will also increase the profit in your business as many clients will rely on your company.

The audit management software will also be used in order for the auditors to know if there is a need for a corrective or preventive action. This software can synchronize the information with the CAPA documents in order to know if a corrective action is needed to be revised or a new one should be implemented.

Other features of this type of software are its user friendly interface and scoring methods that will let you determine the performance score in the company. Aside from being easily configured, it also has a user-friendly interface that will really help you manage it properly.

And if you want to get audit management software, you can try checking online to find the ones that will fit your company's needs. As long as you have this software, you will surely know how your company is working and be able to do something to improve it.

With audit management software working for your company, you will surely be able to do a lot of things inside your company to improve your workflow and also the product or services that you are offering. And you will be able to increase your profits because of this.

To learn more about audit management software and quality management software and how it can help your company, you can visit MasterControl.com.

Understanding Marketing Part 15 - Using Audit Results to Focus Your Plan

Your marketing profile is a helpful planning tool. Use it to spot areas where you want to enhance and areas where you have strengths you would like to maintain and exploit. One of my associates, employed a version of this marketing audit to help operatives from electrical resources look at their marketing functions.

All of them faced the challenge that their markets were opening up to competition for the 1st time due to deregulation. This challenge meant that these resources couldn't take their customer-base for granted. Naturally, you have not been ready to take your clients for granted.

But would not having regulatory protection of your market area be nice? Ah, well, the times of controlled monopolies are ending, and even power firms have to discover the simple way to induct and keep patrons. The loss of regulatory protection of their buyer base made the marketing audit an exceedingly dynamic marketing tool for these electrical utilities.

The marketing audit was a genuine eye opener, to say the least: it claimed giant areas of marketing in which the firms simply were not active. In a number of these organizations, the audit led on to an agenda that needed a few years or longer to finish.

In your business, the results could be less radical than in the case of the electrical firms, but I'm of the opinion that your marketing audit can end up in an agenda of some kind. Promoting audits always appear to exhibit some wants and generate some good ideas for positive action. Being entirely customer oriented is hard, and making and integrating effective marketing actions in all areas of your business is extremely tough to achieve, too.

So a great next step is to review the observations particularly in locations of particular weakness or strength and develop agenda items that'll help you better attract and keep clients. Right after completing your marketing audit, I would recommend that you're employed up an action agenda based primarily on your results.

If you can not come up with at least five high priority actions for your agenda as a consequence of the audit, I could eat my marketing hat. But do put a good effort into it, because I am rather attached to my marketing hat. I wear that hat often when running my business!

Grace K is a stay at home mom writing articles about various subjects. She is exploring colon cleansing and is interested in internal colon cleansing

Why And How To Conduct A Data Protection Audit

A Data Protection Audit should be part of all businesses general compliance procedures. It helps to ascertain and if required ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998; it provides a valid source of information for improvements; it helps to ensure that management and staff know their responsibilities and comply with them in their everyday tasks; and it helps to improve customer satisfaction and minimise the likelihood of complaints.

How to do it?

First of all, the business should decide who will carry out the audit and document in writing both the audit procedure and the outcome of the audit.

Secondly, the business should decide which parts/divisions of the business as a whole is to be audited and identify those key areas of the organisation that are likely to be particularly involved in the processing of personal data, such as human resources (including payroll, employee benefits and so on), IT (to determine security and contingency measures in place), marketing and customer sales and support.

Next, the business should select who will carry out the audit. It could be external or internal to the business. In any case, the business should:

? Ensure that the person carrying out the audit is independent of the function or department that is audited. The organisation can choose either an external or internal auditor.

? Check that the chosen auditor has been trained to a sufficient level of competence in the skills and know-how required for both conducting and managing audits. This should include: knowledge and understanding of data-protection issues in general, and of the DPA and other legislative requirements in particular and familiarity with assessment techniques (examining, questioning, evaluating and reporting) and management skills (planning, organising, communicating and directing).

? Look for auditors who have demonstrable experience in data protection-related activities.

The audit could be conducted using one of two alternative techniques to conduct an audit:

? Personal interview: This involves one auditor, or several, conducting interviews with representatives from each of the departments selected for audit.

? Customised questionnaire: This involves the development of a customised questionnaire, in which the majority of questions can be answered through the ticking of boxes.

Once the audit information has been consolidated, problem areas for each of the departments will become apparent. Draft department-specific compliance profiles which outline practical ways of correcting non-compliant procedures, and distribute these to the relevant departments for implementation. Compliance profiles should identify:

? The agreed corrective action to be taken in each case.

? The person responsible for ensuring that corrective action is taken.

? The date when the corrective action must be completed.

How to deal with post-audit issues

If the audit discovers any instances of non-compliance, then you should

? Prepare guidelines and circulate them to all employees within the organisation, highlighting compliance issues and providing practical guidance on how to resolve the relevant issue (for example, making it clear that data should only be retained for six months, after which databases should be cleansed). Anassutzi and Co can help you in any step of this process.

? Ensure that employees involved in the collection or processing of personal data attend regular training courses to make sure that the organisation's privacy practices keep pace with data protection and privacy laws as they develop. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) published a Good Practice Note in the form of a staff training checklist for small and medium-sized enterprises. The note outlines some of the key practical implications of the Data Protection Act 1988, and is intended to be used as a basic training framework for general office staff in such organisations. It addresses, among other things, ways of keeping personal information secure, and how to handle requests from individuals for their personal information. The note also emphasises that staff who have duties relating to marketing, computer security and database management may need additional training.

? Review the procedures regularly to ensure that the compliance issues have been resolved.

This article is for general purposes and guidance only and do not constitute legal or professional advice. Copyright 2010 ? Anassutzi & Co Limited. All rights reserved. Information may be shared or reproduced only if accompanied by the author's name and bio.

Dr Maria Anassutzi Intellectual Property Expert has founded Anassutzi & Co limited Anassutzi & Co limited which offers high quality specialist intellectual property, information technology and commercial contracts advice tailored to each of our clients business.

Maria is a seasoned multi-jurisdictional lawyer with vast experience in general corporate commercial law, specialising in intellectual property, information technology, e-commerce and outsourcing and having extensive in-house legal experience and having worked in City law firms and multinational companies.

Factory Audit - Getting It Right First Time

The global financial crisis has oriented business perspectives firmly towards delivering lower cost products whilst maintaining the high levels of quality and service that consumers demand. In the manufacturing sector this means that outsourcing to skilled established production centres in developing nations has become a key priority for many companies that are struggling to maintain margins and hold onto customers.

If you're considering outsourcing your production or are already significantly down the path to doing so then you'll need to make auditing your suppliers a priority.

Why conduct a factory audit?

There are several good reasons to keep on top of your outsourcing partners, to ensure both quality of finished goods and also to meet the ethical demands of an increasingly aware consumer base who don't wish to support environmental damage or child/virtual slave labour.

You can break down the audit process into a series of stages, some of which should be continuous and others which can be performed as "one off" activities.


Initial Supplier Evaluation - before you do business with any other party, it makes sense to verify that they are who they say they are, and as importantly that they can genuinely deliver on their promises. Many contacts in the developing world will advertise themselves as representing a factory, when in fact they are middle men. In itself being a middle man is not a bad thing, they often enable small factories to reach a wider market place than they could by themselves. The trouble for outsourcers is that middle men often have next to no control over the relationship with a producer and cannot resolve issues relating to quality or performance.
Social Compliance Auditing - a vital component of delivering products to the wider market is ensuring that your suppliers can meet certain ethical and environmental standards. Even big companies with established policies of using ethical sourcing have fallen foul of failing to audit their supply chain for compliance to these policies, recently the British chain of retailers "Monsoon" were exposed in the national press for utilising child labour (unknowingly) through one of their Indian factories. Risking your hard won reputation is not worth it.
Supply Chain Auditing - it's not just your direct partners that you need to monitor, you also need to make sure that anyone supplying those partners meets certain standards too. As importantly you also need to ensure that any parts or materials supplied by this chain are as promised in any initial agreements, Chinese manufacturers have become notorious for substituting components for lower quality cheaper parts or for adding toxic chemicals to materials in order to up for production defects (including the local scandal of highly toxic Melamine being added to baby milk, resulting in the deaths of several children and severe illness in hundreds more).
Production Inspections - the samples you received are perfect, but the products following those samples are not so good? It's a familiar tale when working with developing nation outsourcers, build quality of prototypes is nearly perfect but lax standards in production mean that production runs simply don't match that quality. You can save time and money by inspecting a small quantity of product during early manufacturing to ensure that at least the initial processes are correct, and also inspecting the finished products before they are shipped to take corrective action early. For large quantities it may also be sensible to conduct inspections throughout the run so that errors which creep into the process can be remedied quickly before they cause huge delays for delivery.
You might also want to have someone check if rejects are being destroyed as per your contract. For high value brands this is an essential element of brand management and often neglected and taken on trust, the markets of Asia are full of rejects from all sorts of major names because of this. Auditing a factory's compliance in this area can save your brand from being tarnished.
Shipping and loading inspections - it doesn't end at the factory either, if your goods are high value, fragile or need to meet certain legal requirements for packing, loading and labelling it's a good idea to ensure that they don't go missing, get broken or fail inspection on arrival by auditing the goods as they are being loaded and through to freighting.

Large companies may find that it is economic to place staff on the ground to cover all elements of factory auditing, but small to medium size businesses may struggle to provide the depth required at an affordable price. If you find yourself in this situation, don't skimp on the auditing process which could result in recalls or worse severe damage to your brand and reputation, find a local partner to work with. Ideally a partner who specialises in factory audits with both Western and local staff, to ensure communication and cultural barriers are not an issue.

Whatever you do, don't compromise on quality your customers won't thank you for it.

Here you can find a reliable China Inspection company as well keep up on all the latest China Quality Control news.

The Auto Loan Audit - Not Only To Avoid An Automobile Repo

Before you go through the pain and trauma of an automobile repo, or even a voluntary repo, the auto loan audit can be used to fight back and save your car, truck, SUV, boat, motorcycle, and even RV. In our current economy where work is slow, the repo man is as busy as ever. Even if the repossession of your auto happened up to one year ago, you can still seek remedy with an auto loan audit, which can uncover discrepancies, misrepresentation or fraud with the auto lender OR dealer. That's right, you can still fight back even if the vehicle was repossessed up to one year ago.

Most auto loans, up to an estimated 80%, have discrepancies, misrepresentation or even fraud in the loan documents. And quite frankly, there are a whole lot of raw deals going on out there. So no longer is an auto loan audit used solely to keep the automobile repo man away. Remedies can include getting your money back, modifying the loan, or even walking away free and clear, whether you are behind on car payments, or current.

Some lending violations may include inflated values, rewritten contracts, or even payment packing, a common practice in the auto industry to get customers to agree to purchase additional products, without disclosing the true impact on the monthly car payment. For example, the dealer may have misrepresented add-on products and told you that the purchase of a vehicle service contract, credit life and disability insurance, or a theft deterrent package would affect the interest rate. The finance manager may have used a line like, "The only way I could get the loan approved was with GAP insurance and a warranty." By law, no lender can require a customer to purchase these add-on products. While they could certainly serve a good purpose to the buyer, waiving these items should have no impact on the financing, and they should be offered strictly as optional products.

The Old "Can't Fund The Loan" Trick. After you drive the vehicle home, the dealer might call and claim difficulty in finding a lender to fund the loan. Then, they would require you to return the vehicle and renegotiate - sometimes without the option of getting all of your down payment or trade-in back. If you signed a binding contract, without any "pending bank approval" or similar language in the contract, they have no right to change the terms.

An auto loan audit examines any violation of Federal and State automobile repo law and laws governing vehicle lending practices, as well as the sales process and proper disclosure. Violations found during the audit review may prevent or even reverse an auto repossession or entitle the buyer to a refund or auto modification.

While there are many reputable car dealers and lenders, in any industry we have the good and the bad. Especially in this economy, where sales are slow and sales reps are hungry, we need to be even more diligent not to get the proverbial wool pulled over our eyes. What kind of add-on products have car dealers tried to sell you? Have you been forced to buy these products in order to get a better rate? Do you know someone who has been a victim of any of these practices? If so, forward this article, and fire away with your comments.

Ron Borch, with over ten years experience in the mortgage industry, is on a mission to save home & car owners from misrepresentation and fraudulent lending practices. http://www.firstchoicefamily.net

Telecom Audit to Get Refund

If your company has been in operation for two or more years, then it is time to have a telephone bill audit done by a professional consultant who is knowledgeable on the billing methods of the telephone industry. An audit will uncover service and billing issue that aren't always apparent when paying the monthly phone bill. Having this done early on enables your company being reimbursed quickly if there are errors on the telephone bills. These over looked billing errors can add up quickly, costing a company thousands of dollars. The company I work with found out because of other issues that they had been overcharged for years on lines that were not being used any longer, taxes, and long distance rates. The longer the time frame the more difficult it can be to have the phone company see their errors and getting them to pay the overages.

Many business change telecom vendors regularly in hopes of a saving, when they should be auditing their telecommunications services and systems to identify billing errors and opportunities to reduce costs while maintaining or improving service. If you do decide to change carriers it is a good idea to have an audit done first because you may be eligible for a refund from your current provider, but you may forfeit any reimbursements if you would cancel their service and go with a competitor.

Why should you use a trained Auditor? Well, I'm auditing a company's telephone bill that last year swapped out an old PBX phone system for a Cisco Call Manager. To do this complete switch over all of the new services had to be installed by their Telecom provider, which meant the company switched from analog lines to a PRI T1. Not until after doing the telephone audit did the company find out that it had been paying for service that it had requested terminated for a year. The company was able to recoup thousands of dollars from the provider. Most companies accounting personal don't have the knowledge or training to determine if accurately applied Federal, State and Local surcharges and taxes have been billed, thereby reducing your possible refunds.

Another point in favor of reviewing your company's telephone service is performing a traffic study to see if you have the right number of lines and circuits to properly handle inbound and outbound calls. Foolishly some company's method of doing a traffic study is to do nothing about their current number of lines until customers start complaining and there is nothing worse than not being able to get thru to a company most people if they can't get thru will go to a vendor with enough lines providing a good customer service. But on the other hand, margins are down and paying for unnecessary lines is not the answer either, a traffic study pays for its self.

There are many payment options available when employing a Telecom consultant to do an audit. They can either be paid by the hour, a set fee or the Consultant may opt to take a percentage of the refund.

Anything that makes your company give better customer service, profits high, and a little money saved it worth spending the money on a telephone audit.

Mike Stephens is president of Net Services Inc a structured cabling company in St. Louis Mo. To find out more about cabling for voice data and video see http://www.netservices1.com

Avoiding an Income Tax Audit If You're a Small Business

There's some thing about just sitting down with an IRS income tax auditor that may get to even the most self-composed and mature men. The bad news is, in case you are self-employed, and your way of filing your tax return is always to innocently do it with a Schedule C, you're already on the IRS shortlist for an income tax audit. What did you do to deserve that? It is simply that you have been personality-profiled - they figure that anyone who runs a business, is bound to try to disguise particular expenditures as business ones, and claim deductions on them. They usually earmark 50% more auditors to audit firms as well as the self-employed pool, than they do for the salaried W-2 pool. But there is certainly still a good deal you are able to do, to maintain out of their sights.

The first factor you do, would be to use a top-notch accounting system on the personal computer. Superior nevertheless, would be should you had your taxes prepared by not someone in-house, but by a expert accounting firm. And whatever you use, it is possible to run your particular expenditures by way of it as well. The first factor that occurs whenever you sit down to an income tax audit is, the IRS agent looks as a result of all the deposits on your back accounts, both business and particular. If they discover more money in your bank accounts then you've documentation for to prove where they came from, you will have a bit of explaining to do.

As well as the flip side of which is, that if you ever do your own taxes, whilst skipping the experts and expert grade software program, the IRS feels that you are almost certainly not going to have done a great job, being an amateur at this and all, and will bring you in for an income tax audit. Did you know that the tax code runs to more than 10,000 pages? Their assumption that you possibly couldn't possibly have all that below your belt, can be a reasonable one. In case you are just worried about how expert CPA may charge you huge bucks, take into account how an income tax audit costs you large bucks as well.

There is certainly a pattern here, in case you would care to see it. They feel that the more homey and individual your business structure is, the more beneath suspicion you naturally are beneath. If you ever happen to be a organization, you are suitable away all more believable within the eyes of the IRS, and have less complications with an income tax audit. You could truly think about upgrading your business to some thing more businesslike - turn your self into an incorporated partnership or one thing. But more critical than any of these image difficulties you may well have of not applying the appropriate software program or looking like a "real" business, is the way you file your returns.

The rule for regardless of whether or not a deduction is reasonable, is always to ask your self in case you would have created the expense in question, in case you did not have a business. Some kinds of expenditures, draw a good deal more scrutiny. Car expenditures, come number one on their list. They assume you to help keep a detailed log of how several miles you traveled for worthy business purposes. Appropriate by means of the year. Basically, the income tax audit persons anticipate you to pull a fast one utilizing your business vehicle for private purposes. The more records you've in this area, the much better.

In case you claim to work from dwelling, telecommuting, as they call it, you'll almost certainly would like to charge for rent from your business for providing a house space for it. This is anything that the auditor will genuinely like to pick apart. Be positive you could have detailed records of how long you work from your property office each day, to make certain that they genuinely believe you.

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