SAPLIB

1. Cheaper, with fewer errors: The average purchase-to-pay transaction can be reduced from $12.03 to $8.58 when moving from a low to a high level of automation. Automated transactions are between 10 and 25 percent less prone to error.

2. Better protection: Preventative controls embedded in a system cannot be ignored and are not subject to interpretation.

3. Quicker to detect and fix: There is little or no time lag between an event occurring and being detected, so management can be notified immediately of a problem.

4. Embedded into core systems: When compliance is embedded rather than bolted on, it enforces policies at the point of access and the point of transaction.

5. Simultaneous control and monitoring: A well-designed automated control offers both control and monitoring. In effect, testing is built in. Further, automated controls can produce reports that serve as their own documentation. All of this makes an auditor’s job easier.

6. Automatic evidence: Automated controls produce evidence on the fly, in audit trails and transaction logs.

7. Death of the sample: Some processes benefit from having every transaction analyzed, instead of just a sampling. Some precarious patterns and trends only reveal themselves when all transactions of a particular type are scrutinized.

8. Ripple effect: The operational benefits to implementing controls extend beyond financial compliance. Companies can use the principles of governance, risk, and compliance to improve all business processes by introducing transactional, master data, and configurable controls to help monitor processes, and then improve them.

Popularity: 27% [?]