Why undertake an IT Audit?
An independent IT audit from Beyond Technology tells you what is working, what is at risk and what it is really costing you, in language a board can act on. We have no products, no reseller margins and no implementation arm, so the findings are the product.
Why Choose Your IT Audit With Beyond Technology
Using generalist auditors for specific IT audits will not generate optimal results as the generalist auditors lack real world experience and often recommend best practice approaches that without contextual understanding, fail in implementation. All of the Beyond Technology Consulting audit products are focused on providing the required oversight to the organisations executive, but also provide truly actionable advice to IT on how to improve their service levels to the business.
These core products include:
- Broad IT Function Review and Audit
- IT Operations Review and Audit
- External Service Provider Operations Audit
- IT Infrastructure and Application Portfolio Review
- IT Governance and compliance Audit
- IT Risk Audit
- Business/IT alignment Audit
- Internal Audit function Technology SME
It is generally considered best practice to undertake periodic external reviews of IT to consider efficiency, costs, service levels, risk profile and business alignment. These may take the form of a broad IT Review, or specific compliance audit activities.
Each of these Audits provide a management report that identifies any areas of concern, considers industry benchmarks and make recommendations in terms of “Actionable Advice” on how measurable improvements can be made. The focus of each audit is tailored to suit our client’s individual needs or concerns.
Common areas of concern include:
- IT skills and resourcing levels
- Cyber Resilience & Information Security
- Business/Technology alignment
- Process maturity and Technology Innovation
- Architecutural effectiveness and agility
- Data and Digital readiness
- Documentation maturity
- Software licensing and hardware lifecycle management
- Helpdesk service levels
- Project benefit realisation
- Technology and operational efficiency
- Infrastructure performance & vulnerabilities
- Proactive and Preventative maintenance
- Recoverability and Data integrity
- Failure point identification
- Governance effectiveness
- Policy compliance
- Security risks
- Financial & budget management issues
- Operational risk & sustainability
Our approach
Scope. We agree the questions the audit must answer, from a short focused review to a broad function audit, sized to your organisation and concerns.
Assess. A formal IT audit methodology with a business-alignment focus: we look past compliance tick-boxes to whether controls actually serve business goals.
Report and act. Findings and prioritised recommendations in plain language, walked through with your executive or board, ready to become a plan. If you outsource IT or run your own department, a regular independent audit is good practice either way.
After you identified the root cause of our difficulties we have never looked back”
CFO | Financial Services Industry
I was astounded to see how reprioritising our IT could deliver such a material improvement in business outcomes”
MD | Large field services organisation
It’s the first time that I clearly understand how we engage our IT to change the status quo”
CEO | Large Professional Services Firm
Reading your report produced without conflict-of-interest, I clearly understand how biased previous technology advice had been”
CEO | Not-for-Profit Organisation
Our business outcomes
Beyond Technology advises organisations on how to use IT to achieve business outcomes.
We help CFOs and CIOs reduce IT costs without losing capability: we find spending that is out of line with business goals, older technology that costs more to run, and systems the organisation pays for but does not use well.
Many organisations carry a significant IT failure risk without understanding either the potential or consequences of failure. Quantifying the latent risk, and taking steps to mitigate it not only makes good business sense, it often provides significant improvement in the efficiency and availability of “business as usual” IT service.
With the growing demands on IT departments it can be all too easy to focus on rapidly expanding capability and addressing the day-to-day challenges of running the technology. Properly aligning IT to direct business requirements, while improving the communication channels between IT and the business delivers real gains in efficiency and capability.
Digital and Technology enablement is critical to all business’s growth plans, and without appropriate IT foundations and planning your growth journey will be lost at sea. Aligning your technology planning to your business strategy and ensuring appropriate priority is given to future enablement projects makes a decisive difference to your business growth plans.
Trusted By The Best
Frequently Asked Questions
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Drop us a line and we’d be happy to answer any questions you have.
In most professions where information is asymmetric (i.e. the professional could take advantage of knowing more about the subject that they are advising you on) such as Lawyers and Doctors, the governing body can deregister the professional as stop them from practicing. This does not happen with Technology professionals so conflict of interest is a critical problem. Similarly when a technologist is heavily invested in one specific technology it often becomes their go-to solution (to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail). By Maintaining our independence, Beyond Technology Consulting ensures that you are provided with unbiased and actionable advice that you can trust is free from conflict of interest and be assured that we are not monetising the advice that we provide you.
Scope drives duration. A short, focused review moves quickly; a broad IT function audit takes longer. The scope, and what it will take, is agreed with you before we commence.
It depends on the scope, which is agreed up front: you receive a clear proposal before anything starts, sized to the questions you need answered.
“Actionable Advice” is accessible, accurate and is advice that is provided in a language and manner that does not require technical qualifications to understand. We ensure that our recommendations are fit-for-purpose with an understanding of the context of your organisation to be both affordable and achievable.
We focus on understanding the core requirements of the business so that our advice is based on your requirements not the available technology. This ensures that you don’t end up with a solution looking for a problem and ensures that technology outcomes will grow with your business and flex with changes in the technology.
We focus on understanding the core requirements of the business so that our advice is based on your requirements not the available technology. This combined with a bias towards flexible technology solutions helps to provide technology outcomes that will grow with your business and flex with changes in the technology.
There are two key reasons that organisations don’t undertake regular independent technology reviews. Firstly many boards and executive don’t know that organisations like Beyond Technology Consulting exist and they are left thinking that the only options are IT Audits that are provided by the big accounting firms that don’t provide any answers or actionable advice. The second reason is that they don’t feel that they understand enough about IT to be able to get value from a review. Beyond Technology Consulting understands this and have designed our organisation to provide “Actionable Advice” that is accessible, accurate and provided in a language and manner that does not require technical qualifications to understand.
Related Case Studies
Evidence of the outcomes we have achieved
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