ACL Protects the Bottom Line by Bringing Governance to the Front Line

ACL SaaS Platform Spring '18 Release Lifts Burden of Policy Compliance, Process Effectiveness, and Internal Controls Management

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Highlights

• Enhanced enterprise governance through easy process control automation tools for the front lines: Mission Control, Control Performance, and Automated Control Assessment

• More impactful and efficient audit work for large-scale assurance teams: Projects Dashboard, Citation Mode, and Enterprise Audit Workflows

ACL today announced new and enhanced ACL™ GRC platform offerings including a new set of tools that shift governance and control management to the front lines. They also fully automate control activities and enable an audit-proof organization. ACL is a leading governance SaaS provider helping governments and the world's largest companies quantify risk, stamp out fraud, and optimize performance.

"Management in most organizations lacks visibility into how well processes and controls are performing, while front-line staff are overwhelmed trying to simultaneously operate those processes and controls, and deal with audits of their work," commented Dan Zitting, chief product officer at ACL. "The ACL platform's new features resolve these issues by fully automating process controls and proactively communicating deviations. They essentially audit-proof key processes across the organization."

"Get In and Get Out" Process and Control Management with Mission Control

Departments including security, IT, finance, operations, and a variety of others, manage hundreds of controls and policies, creating a constant struggle to decipher policy compliance, process effectiveness, and controls status. Management needs a comprehensive view of processes and controls, with easy-to-understand performance metrics that fundamentally illustrate how well the organization is running.

ACL's Mission Control provides a centralized portal for real-time status updates, flagging anything that needs attention and simplifying day-to-day controls management. It eliminates the traditional disconnect between policies, actual business processes, and controls, in order to simply provide the answer to "what must I do next?" This ensures processes are strong, controls are effective, and policies are consistently followed. It also enables the front lines to provide updates on changes in processes and controls, without requiring knowledge of audit or governance—thus infusing governance into daily operations.

Operationalize Governance with Control Performance 

ACL's Control Performance provides front-line operations staff with an easy way to fulfill their responsibilities across the governance process—through simple newsfeed-style updates and response questionnaires. It also enables second and third line of defense teams to automate monitoring and remediation of process deviations and control exceptions.

Citation Mode Ensures Audits and Reports Are Never Deemed 'Fake News'

Large corporations and government agencies rely on internal auditors, auditor generals, or inspector generals, to uncover fraud, waste, and abuse. Still, in contentious scenarios, every statement in formal reports must be easily defensible.

In-document evidence citation and linking traditionally takes multiple weeks just to cross-reference. The QA must then verify the report line by line before determining whether it's strong enough to be presented to shareholders, Congress, or other top-level stakeholders.

ACL's Citation Mode allows assurance teams to document original source evidence support for all conclusions and commentary, no matter how granular the organization's QA processes may require each citation to be.

Keep a Pulse on the Organization's Key Activities with Projects Dashboard

ACL's Projects Dashboard provides project managers with a comprehensive view of the organization's collective activity and, more importantly, how it benchmarks against peer organizations. "We realized that governance professionals needed a lens on all the most important activities with oversight of status and how efficient and effective they are relative to their peers," Zitting added.

These enhancements to ACL's enterprise governance platform come shortly after ACL's recognition as a 'Strong Performer' in The Forrester Wave™: Governance, Risk, and Compliance Platforms, Q1 2018 report. According to the report, "ACL's GRC product portfolio began with an audit solution, known for its strong analytics and financial controls testing. From there, the company has evolved to a comprehensive GRC platform vendor, with a product that leverages these exceptional native analytics in every function it offers."

To learn more about the ACL platform Spring '18 release, visit: https://community.acl.com/s/spring18.

Supporting Resources:

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About ACL

ACL delivers enterprise governance SaaS solutions that are transforming audit, compliance, and risk management to give organizations unprecedented control over their business. www.acl.com

© 2018 ACL Services Ltd. ACL and the ACL logo are registered trademarks of ACL Services Ltd. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE ACL

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