A 5-step template for heads of audit to craft an effective audit strategy
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Audit Strategy Template for Effective Planning
This year's top priority for audit leaders is to keep pace with the fast-evolving cybersecurity landscape.
To achieve this, an effective audit strategic plan that aligns your enterprise strategy with specific initiatives for your function is essential. When executed well, your audit strategy should offer a clear roadmap to accomplish your business goals.
Download the Gartner Audit Strategy Template and Toolkit to learn:
- The 5 activities that are key to an impactful audit strategy
- What tools and frameworks are needed to build a measurable audit strategy
- How to capture and communicate your audit strategy to stakeholders with a simple and visually impactful one-page template
More About the Audit Strategy Template
The Gartner Audit Strategy Template and Toolkit helps audit leaders define the roadmap for executing the key actions required to meet audit strategic goals in alignment to the enterprise business model and goals. Leaders can leverage this audit strategy template to create and communicate a clear action plan that states where the audit function currently is, where it needs to be, how to get there and how to measure progress.
Audit Strategy FAQs
What is an effective Audit Strategy?
A effective audit strategy is a functional roadmap that assesses current resources, costs and budget and aligns them with the company’s mission and goals. It sets a plan to align with enterprise goals to grow and innovate, despite changing and often unpredictable business conditions. An audit strategy sets priorities, manages trade-off decisions and ensure it continues to make critical investments to meet business needs.
What are the 5 key activities for an effective audit strategy?
- Verify the business context. Confirm the enterprise mission and goals and make sure your employees know how they apply to their everyday work. Align your audit goals for impact.
- Assess your audit function’s ability to deliver on your goals and create a plan to fill the capability gaps that will slow your impact.
- Strategically manage audit budgets to prioritise cost, budget and investment decisions to favor initiatives that will drive impact — and demote those that won’t.
- Decide how to measure your progress. Select measures and metrics that will demonstrate the progress you’re making against the commitments you’ve made.
- Document your strategy — ideally on just one page — to simply and clearly state where the audit organisation is, where it is going and how it will get to the future state.
Why should use our Audit Strategy Template & Toolkit?
The Gartner Audit Strategy Template and Toolkit helps audit leaders develop a multiyear department strategy and implement that strategy through identifying measurable annual targets. Working through this tool will enable you to:
- Develop your strategic plan
- Identify key threats, challenges and drivers to address through the strategic plan
- Determine priority areas, goals and metrics that will address department and organisational challenges
- Prioritise initiatives and track implementation to fulfill your strategic goals
- Communicate the strategic plan across the department and organisation
Develop an annual plan based on your multiyear strategy at the start of each year to make progress toward it. The initiatives you plan on an annual basis should contribute to the execution of the multiyear strategy. Annual planning can serve as a course corrector for your multiyear plan if necessary.