EXPERTISE

GOVERNANCE, RISK AND COMPLIANCE (GRC)

Organisations of any size and nature need to operate efficiently if they are to achieve their stated objectives. To achieve this, organizational design and management approaches have led to complex operational environments. The advent of new and ever improving technologies while making information exchange and processing easier, have created demand for almost instant and real time response to demands from internal and external stakeholders. This happens in an environment where regulation is tighter and demand for management accountability is ever increasing.

Any organisation that hopes to satisfy the needs of its stakeholders at the desired speed, efficiency and accuracy needs to be adequately integrated and agile. To achieve this, an appropriately design system of Governance, Risk and Compliance must anchor the operational design of any organisation. It is our belief that managers must concern themselves with managing risks that militate against achievement of their strategic objectives, while creating an efficiently controlled environment for the execution of tasks necessary to deliver performance.

Services

We provide clients with an independent, objective and systematic Governance, Risk and Compliance advisory service that evaluates and improves the design and operating effectiveness of critical business risk, controls, compliance and governance processes towards the achievement of strategic and operational goals and efficiency.

Governance

There is a growing body of knowledge around Governance, as well as laws and guidelines that need to be implemented throughout all levels of organisations. These in one way or another create an obligation on organisations to create and manage acceptable standards of organizational governance.

We assist organisations to:

  • set up appropriate organisational design,
  • with appropriate delegations of authority,
  • policy development and process implementation.
Risk Management

In line with our philosophy, we believe management’s primary task is to manage risk at all levels of the organisation so that it is sufficiently mitigated in order to enable delivery of performance expected by stakeholders. In our view, risk management is not a mere “tick box” exercise, but a scientific process of organizational integration.

We assist clients to:

  • train staff at all levels around risk management and contextualizing their roles in relation to risk
  • develop a risk management framework and strategy, which includes
    • risk appetite framework formulation
    • determination of risk response strategies
    • integrated risk management approach, with a view of risk from a 360 degree point of view
    • formulation of risk mitigation strategies
    • costing of risk and responses to determine appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency
    • incident management
    • organizational ethics framework and management
Controls

Internal controls are a set of tasks and activities that management designs and approves. These enable mitigation of risks and support performance. At the core, controls are designed to ensure that all activities and transactions of an organisations occur in circumstances where they are authorised, necessary, relate to the attainments of objectives, valid and complete. Internal controls also assist an organisation with mitigating risks such as Cyber risk, risk of fraud and corruption as well as compliance risk.

We assist organisations to formulate and attain appropriately controlled environments through

  • design of internal controls, from tasks to management actions that ensure their effectiveness
  • automate, where possible, some control activities to minimize human error
  • train management to design and perform control self-assessment on a continual basis
  • design a link between the organisations’ strategy, governance and operational design as well as control approach to eliminate control overload and inefficiencies
  • design and implement standards-based controls to attain certification, where necessary. For example, implementation of ISO standards
  • assist those charged with governance with management assurance on the effectiveness and efficiency of the control environment at all times.

INTERNAL AUDIT

Internal Audit plays an important role in organisations as an independent function that provides those charged with governance with assurance on what management reports to them.

A well functioning internal audit function assists organisations to perform at the their peak, eliminates leakages and improves management processes.

In line with the applicable standards of internal audit, we assist our clients in the following ways:

Outsourcing

In some cases, it may be desirable to outsource the entire internal audit function. This improves the independence of the function, and gives clients access to expertise of dedicated professionals without a need for ever increasing investment in recruitment, training and retention of staff. Also, our firm ensures a continual quality assurance cycle not ordinarily available with in-sourced internal audit.

Where we have an outsource arrangement, a director of our company performs a role ordinarily played by a Chief Audit Executive. The added advantage is that the client benefits from knowledge gained by the client from the vast exposure one has in their portfolio of clients

Co-sourcing

In a co-sourcing arrangement, we provide skilled internal auditors at any level, to work alongside internal staff of the client. This would normally be to augment the client’s own internal team, to bring expertise not available to the client or to enable the client to manage their financial and human resource better

Information technology assurance services

We perform an audit of your information technology environment, focusing on both the technical and human aspects of IT. These audits are aimed at providing assurance that the IT environment is appropriately designed and works as intended. With the rapidly evolving technologies and risks associated with it, we have access to expertise that enable us to provide continual assurance on IT operational, general and application controls.

Data analytics and insights based assurance

We employ data analytics tools and techniques to provide added assurance to our clients on operations and transactional environments that they manage. With data insights, we are able to look into the efficiencies of operations, providing insights into how controls can be improved in a manner that unlocks value.

Operational due diligence

Often clients implement change that affects a layer of management that is responsible for overall governance of an organisation, e.g. a board of directors or CEO being appointed to replace a previous one. In these instances, it may be necessary for the incoming incumbent to get a sense of the state of the organisation both operationally and financially, among others. We provide suitably designed internal due diligence that extends insights beyond external audit reports, which may assist incoming managers to formulate their own strategic plans and approaches.

MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

We offer a diverse portfolio of services consolidated under three business verticals namely, Strategy, Process Optimisation and People Management.

We drive business strategy execution through process, people and technology optimisation.

We help our clients make better decisions, convert those decisions to actions, and deliver the sustainable success they desire.

Services

Strategy Solutions

We have experience and track record of helping leaders attain winning performance and build stronger organisations. We have worked with business leaders for more than 20 years helping them address their key strategic issues. Our Strategy Solutions include:

  • Business Modelling and Strategy
  • Strategic Financial Modelling
  • Turnaround Strategy Development
  • Functional Strategy Development
Process Solutions

Business processes form the core of an organisation’s operations and determine organisational efficiency. In order to remain competitive and relevant, business processes must be efficient, effective, agile and align to organisational mission, vision and strategic objectives. We review, analyse and streamline or reengineer key business processes, and adopt a process-oriented view to help customers identify ways to improve key business processes.  Our Process Solutions include:

  • Business Process Modelling
  • Business Process Analysis & Optimisation, and
  • Business Process Implementation & Monitoring
People Solutions

We are dedicated to improving organisational performance through best practice HR services, ensuring positive commercial outcomes for our clients. Our People Solutions include:

  • HR Strategy and Planning
  • Organisational Transformation and Change Management
  • Organisational Restructuring
  • Policy Development
  • Performance Management
  • Labour Relations
  • Competency Profiling and Assessment
  • Job Evaluation
  • Remuneration Structuring
  • Organisational Surveys