Organizations are not always able to ask managers and employees. Instead, they would like to query documents in order to answer a questionnaire: enter the Virtual Auditor. Alternatively, scanning documents and asking people can be used in unison. For example, one could query documents about ICT standards and then verify with ICT personnel to what extent these standards are applied on the work floor. Or managers indicate they regularly discuss how to achieve company objectives in their weekly meetings, yet the meeting minutes show no sign of it.
The audit proof points
The Virtual Auditor scans documents for proof that certain answers have been achieved. They are, therefore, the mirror image of the improvement steps. As the improvement steps indicate how to improve from one answer to the other, the audit proof points check whether these improvement steps have actually been followed.
PRAIORITIZE uses these improvement steps to create the audit proof points using the "HELP ME PRAIORITIZE" button. Here's an example:
Assume we have this question out of a questionnaire about a salesforce's preparedness. Asking for verifiable facts or behavior would 3 answers that improve in sophistication (1.)
With three answers, there are two ways to improve: from Answer 1 to Answer 2 (2.) and from Answer 2 to Answer 3. PRAIORITIZE create for each of the improvement options 5 improvement steps (3.), and it does the same for every next improvement aspect (4.):
As said, the audit proof points are in turn derived from the improvement steps (5.). These five improvement steps from one answer to the other are by default translated into 3 audit proof points (6.). You are totally free to edit and refine these proof points as you see fit.
TIP: Note the PASS THRESHOLD percentage (7.)!
This percentage helps you tune the auditor's severity. Is it really necessary that an audited team or process meet all three proof points to achieve an answer? Or is two out of three good enough? Or imagine that you would show as proof points ten different examples, of which achieving at least two is a requirement. Then the PASS THRESHOLD percentage drops to 20%.
The reason to have three proof points can be explained by doing a bit of calculation. Assume a questionnaire with 30 questions, each with three answers, and therefore two blocks of improvement steps and three audit proof points per block. That yields a total of 30 × 2 × 3 = 180 proof points. That is already a LOT of detail!. On the other hand, people may get irritated by long questionnaires, but virtual auditors have endless patience. It is not uncommon to have a questionnaire with 100+ questions and nearly 1,000 proof points. That is a level of detail you could never achieve by a real-life auditor. In practice, this means that the Virtual Auditor does the heavy lifting, and the human auditor discusses the anomalies and outliers.