Strategic Planning for Internal Audit:
A CAE’s Guide to Driving Value Creation
In recent years, many boards have sharpened their focus on the business strategies of their organizations in response to mounting financial pressures and the combined impact of disruptive change and new technology. As a result, internal audit groups around the world are being challenged to keep pace with the strategies of their organizations while seeking to develop appropriate strategies for their own internal audit activities. Moreover, internal auditors are facing the continuing need to understand and address the specific expectations of executive management and the audit committee, their key stakeholders, to ensure that the activities and strategies of internal audit are both relevant and effective. Given the broad scope of these strategic considerations, and their increasing importance to the global internal audit community, the 2018 TeamMate Insights Survey focused on internal audit practices and processes relating to strategic planning for internal audit.
To facilitate the planning process, TeamMate has developed the TeamMate Internal Audit Effectiveness Model, designed to streamline and enhance the internal audit planning process. The model, which reflects input from internal audit functions around the world, can support organizational efforts to position internal audit as a critical function providing added value to key stakeholders and the organization as a whole when operating in a “highly effective” manner.
To be highly effective, an internal audit function needs to address each of these performance-related dimensions in a comprehensive manner. In this report we will describe how chief audit executives (CAEs) can meet these challenges and develop strategic plans designed to optimize internal audit performance.