What are benefits and barriers when performing remote audits?

• Posted by Roopesh N May 31, 2020 - Filed in Other - #ISO 9001 Certification services in Bangalore  - 1,942 views

  ISO 9001 Consulting Services in Bangalore Thanks to the fast advances in technology, conducting remote audits is becoming more popular among organizations.  Businesses already include high-tech strategies that allow audit teams to receive and share data, conduct interviews, and make observations with organizations from all over the world without the need of commuting for several hours to the audit site.  Certification bodies will certainly have to adapt to this new situation. 

  What is a remote audit?

  ISO 9001 Services in Saudi Arabia A remote audit, also known as an e-audit, is exactly the same as an audit but using electronic means to remotely obtain audit evidence and evaluate it objective in order to determine the extension of conformity to the audit criteria.

  ISO 9001 consultant in Bangalore The remote audit techniques are similar to those used in person but, for instance, you can also share files via email, Google drive, Box, etc.  In addition with the company can provide documents by sharing its desktop screen or via video conference using Skype, Zoom.  Which is also used for the interviews together with the phone.  Surprisingly, reviewing documents and records virtually can be even more effective than doing so onsite.

  ISO 9001 Consultancy in Saudi Arabia Conducting a remote audit does not mean that all the work should be performed offsite; some of the work can still be conducted onsite.  E-auditing means that, if possible,  auditing activities will be configured to be conducted away from the auditors location, considering that sometimes that the employees are still not familiar enough with methods used in a remote audit in order to obtain the required audit evidence.

  Benefits of remote auditing

  ISO 9001 Consultancy in Bangalore There are several reasons why conducting remote audits can be beneficial for auditing companies.  Here you can find the most relevant ones.

  Saving time and money with the use of technology. Most data, if not all, is accessible from anywhere, such as a cloud portal, so why waste so much time travelling to check documentation that can be available by other means? In this sense, there will be a significant reduction in money and time spent on commuting to the audit location.  In addition, Interviews and even observations can be conducted through the popular platforms like Skype or Zoom, which are regularly used by many of the companies already.

  Avoiding travelling to “difficult” locations. Some locations can be difficult to access for many reasons; maybe they are just in an isolated area, or strict permits are needed to get in - even visas sometimes are required if the audits are conducted internationally.  With a remote audit, you avoid these difficulties.

                                       

  Barriers of conducting remote audits

  When it comes to the barriers that an organization needs to face while conducting a remote audit, we can find the following:

  Issues with technology. Depends on the location of the auditors and technology used, one of the main challenges organizations can run into is logistics.  Sometimes, network connections are not very reliable, or the auditors can have difficulties with accessing the VPN to log into a database in order to show evidence.  In addition, due to network issues, interviews and meetings can be interrupted, taking some time to reconnect and solve all the network problems.

  Our advice, Go for it

  ISO 9001 Certification in Saudi Arabia helps companies to increase the guarantee to return on investment.  Saudi Arabia is one of the developed country is located in gulf region with Riyadh city as the capital of the country which is one of largest city across the country.