How to choose the best audit software?

Audit software supports conducting audits and inspections of business processes. The goal here is to improve efficiency within organizations. With digital registrations of the results and automatic follow-up of the findings, one ensures that this actually produces results. But why choose specific audit software? Are there other options? The choice is vast and therefore we look at the wishes and requirements from different angles.

What is the best auditing software?

The best auditing software? This question is not easy to answer. It depends partly on the industry, the scope, the auditors’ experience and possibly the ease of use of the employee! But it must also be cost-effective or easily adaptable by, for example, a modification or expansion of standards. Therefore, we choose a solution that is generic but has all functionalities on board to support the entire PDCA cycle of audits. Both for auditors and employees. A solution that can also be used for other digital registrations.

Maximum benefit

If you invest time in audits as an organization, you also want to get the maximum benefit from them. With smart digital audit forms, you not only ensure proper administration of audit reports but you can also monitor the follow-up of audit findings. Of course, the intended actions must be carried out and, moreover, they must be assessed for effectiveness after implementation. Good audit software contains up-to-date summaries of the actions, which can easily be traced back to the original audit. Thus, in addition to stimulating the continuous improvement process, the software also supports compliance and business continuity of the organization.

The software for audit management systems

All audit software has some generic functionalities such as recording the report, deviations, and plotting and monitoring actions. The difference lies mainly in the extent to which the audit process and definitions are customizable. Think of standardized terminology for the industry or standard. But often this is far too elaborate or formal for organizations in practice. In addition, the workflow management system used is not adaptable to the organization or, on the contrary, one wants to use the system for a combination of diverse standards. If you start working with a pre-configured software package, chances are it will miss connection with your organization. It is therefore advisable to properly define the needs and requirements before purchasing a special audit software package, but also to consider the possible use of an alternative generic digital forms package.

The different types of audit software

Audits come in many varieties. The approach of the audit can vary from an ISO compliance audit by a real audit team to a self-audit where employees test their own work environment. A compliance audit will look against the standard and at the functioning of business processes.So the content is not so fixed in advance. But in a self-audit, you often see a questionnaire to be checked. For example, this is widely used in high-risk industries such as chemicals or food production companies. From Lean organizations, a 5S audit form is often used.

Many organizations also use combinations of audits with different follow-up routes within the organization. All in all, you can actually say that a standard audit software system can never meet all needs. But a smart generic digital forms system can!

Getting started with audit software

With LeanForms, you can digitize and automate almost all business processes. There are even several templates already available in the included library. But of course you can tweak these even more to suit your own organization.

In addition, a number of interesting features are easy to add:

• Periodic automatic initiation of audit forms;
• Analyze trend of root causes for deviations;
• Plot actions to users or groups of users in the organization;
• Attach evidence at conclusion of action;
• Inform teams/departments or action holders with targeted emails.

But in addition to the audit process, the system can also be used to optimize other business processes, from incident reporting to entry control. Or complaints and change requests. Thus, it becomes a business management system that really works.