What Is Virtual Internal Audit?
Are you familiar with internal audits already? If you aren’t, we suggest you research a bit more since they are important for your company. Here is a quick definition. Internal audits consist of an activity that every company needs to conduct in order to determine the degree of conformance with the ISO standards and find any non-conformity.
If they are found, the company needs to carry out corrective actions or solutions to deal with the problems and improve the management system it studied and assessed. This process is called “internal” because companies handle it by themselves. This is why you must be familiar with it since every company needs to implement standards and look for the improvement of operations and management systems.
Audits aren’t easy to conduct, instead, they take a lot of time and effort, and when it comes to conducting internal ones, you have to invest—mostly—a lot of money. Not everyone has to invest enough resources in this, which is why they have to evaluate the options and determine and how they will be done. This takes us to the next and main idea: Virtual Internal Audits.
These aren’t any different from the process of the previous one but the difference is that you will not conduct it in-site. Instead, you will do it remotely—if this word and its definition give you a better idea of what it is all about. You might be wondering right now why companies would want to conduct a remote audit instead of going for the traditional process of doing it on-site.
Well, several reasons apply, but we can start by mentioning one of the most common ones: there are not enough resources to conduct an on-site one. Believe it or not, Virtual Internal Audits help you to save money since you don’t have to spend in a place for your team of auditors and the rest of the resources available for the project can be spent in other elements.
For example, buying all the materials to manage an audit program. If you think about it, there is no need to conduct an audit face-to-face with the rest of the team since there are many ways to share information, go on a meeting, and work without so many distractions.
Now, is there a major difference in internal audits and virtual audits?
Besides the distance, methods of communication, sharing information and everything that can be replaced thanks to the technology, no, there isn’t. We are sure you are thinking, “conducting it online—to make it simpler—is already a big deal”. And you might be right with this.
But when it comes to the guidelines and steps to conduct the audit and obtain the final results once it has finished, the truth is that there aren’t quite different.
You need to conduct and manage the audit program in the same way but the methods of meeting your team members and sharing information will be different.
This will speed up the process and allow you to work with fewer distractions but essentially, it has the same parameters and requirements to meet from certain standards just like on-site internal audits.
What do you need to know about ISO standards?
Since a company needs to get certified in ISO standards to conduct and plan audits properly, the same applies to virtual ones. Therefore, you can’t run from the need to educating and familiarizing yourself with several standards and normative that apply.
Starting with the one that is especially for audits: ISO 9001. These ISO standards are important for any person and company that wants to conduct internal audits, and it doesn’t matter if they are on-site or virtually. Do you want to conduct it properly and find or get all the information and results you need? Start reading the guidelines in the normative.
Of course, there are many other ISOs involved and related to Virtual Internal Audits, but they depend on the industry your company is part of and the specific ISO needs of your business. Therefore, we can say that the rest of the ISOs will quite depend on your situation.
Most companies—however—have a hard time trying to keep up with all the standards they have to implement and audit to determine any non-conformity. There is a lot involved and you will have to deal with every small or big element of it.
For this, you can count on us, ISO Pros. We are a company specialized in ISO standards that can help you to understand internal audits better—on-site and virtual ones—, and keep your ISO Virtual Internal Audits needs on a check.
We will help you to implement every normative, to get familiar with auditing management systems, and get you certified for you to conduct your own audits.
Why would you need our support?
We are sure that, at some point, you will have difficulties while dealing with all the ISOs that have to be implemented and used. It is normal and every company, especially if it is new or just started to operate a few months or years ago, goes through this issue. ISO standards are hard to implement when you aren’t too familiar with them, and all the requirements are written and established in them are not one or two but rather dozens.
Therefore, don’t hesitate to contact us if you are having problems with your Virtual Internal Audits ISO needs. We will support and assist you in everything you need and the best part is that you can get certified with us with every standard you implement. You don’t need to access our support either if you are looking for certification only.
Just let us know what you expect, need, and want, and we will help you to determine the service and certification you require from us. Want to know more about Virtual Internal Audits? We have more information on our website that we are sure will come in handy for you.