Is planning the first step for the audit process?

Audit process can be the best way to have an outside set of eyes take a close look at your process to help identify areas for improvement, or possibly complacency, which can help you streamline your process to run better, faster or more efficiently.

Planning is the first step for the audit process

1) Planning the Audit Schedule

A key part of a good process is having an overall Audit Schedule that is readily available to let everyone know when each process will be audited over the upcoming cycle (usually a yearly schedule). If you were not to have a plan and went with surprise audits, the message that is given from senior management is “We don’t trust our employees.” By publishing the audit intentions, the message is that this is meant as a support to the process owners and the auditors are there to help. This can allow the process owners to time the finish of any improvement projects that they are working on to be before the audit, so that they can gather valuable information on the implementation, or to request the auditors to focus on helping to gather information for other planned improvements.

There are four more steps under audit process

2) Planning the Process Audit

3) Conducting the Audit

4) Reporting on the Audit

5) Follow-up on Issues or Improvements Found