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"The outputs from the monitoring process are not only used as notifications, but as flexible method to analyze adherence to policies and trends."
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ProCharge is an easy-to-deploy yet comprehensive governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solution that, among other features, offers Continuous Auditing and Continous Monitoring. Continuous Auditing and Monitoring aims to lower and ultimately eliminate financial losses caused by intentional or unintentional failure to follow organizational purchasing and related policies. ProCharge supports both types of continous concepts: Continuous Auditing and Continuous Monitoring.
In order to provide full visibility, control, and ultimately governance over the clients organizational spend, the ProCharge offers a powerful and highly-flexible facility to analyze and evaluate incoming data. This is achieved through a ProCharge Business Activity Monitoring component. Incoming purchase, vendor, other supporting data, and even user activities are continuously monitored. Deficiencies, suspicious activities, non-compliance, and other checks are identified. ProCharge then provides the ability to notify one or more users through email or system means in form of an Alert.
Alerting
TakeCharge Alerts are essentially notifications issued to a particular or group of users via the ProCharge web portal, email messaging subsystem or both. Users will review alerts and may respond to them. The alerts are generated based on business activity monitoring or other rules.
For example, the person(s) alerted on a transaction can vary based on the amount, the item purchased, when the purchase occurred, the vendor, the buyer, or the category. System Alerts and Email notifications can be setup to be automatically delivered for this and any other criteria which the client chooses to configure an alert for. The outputs from the monitoring process are not only used as notifications, but as flexible method to analyze adherence to policies and trends. In addition, the alerts may also be used for remediation. For example, a user can respond to a system-generated e-mail and have the comments attached to the resolution trail of the case.
Alerts can originate as:
- Exceptions in non-compliance to elementary constraints
- Results of activated rules such as policy violations, or unusual behaviors
- Results of process related activities, and events caused by data and status changes
Monitoring Rules
Monitoring rules are activated and used by the system to oversee and examine system data and user activities. The designated users (such as approvers or auditors) may be alerted of non-compliant activities, exceptions, system events, etc. TakeCharge offers a large repository of business rules incorporating years of experience with providing control and visibility for variety of clients, industry best practices, and enforcement of government regulations.
In order to maximize the potential of ProCharge rule base, TakeCharge follows a mapping methodology design to minimize setup time, provide organization, and allow flexibility.
Additionally, to meet client’s oversight, auditing, and transparency needs in a robust and consistent manner, TakeCharge uses a proprietary rule design model. The model guides the steps involved in working with the client to determine rules, analyze and enhance the rules to achieve maximum effectiveness, and finally generate and activate the rules. The parties involved in this process include the client domain expert and TakeCharge staff.
Business Rule Engine
Continuous monitoring is enabled by ProCharge Business Rule Engine. The rule engine executes a relevant set of rules for Business Activity Monitoring, Business Process, and Data Matching purposes.
ProCharge’s Business Rule Engine executes a variety of rules. The categories include:
- Business Process control
- Business Activity Monitoring
- Reminders and notifications
- Business Process support (such as transactional selections for audits)
ProCharge Auditing facility offers a powerful set of features for auditing your purchases. The key features include selection of transactions for audit, auditor support, remediation, communication, and audit history.
Transactional Selection
In general auditing scenarios, only a subset of transactions are audited. High volumes of transactions prevent human checking of each transaction. Instead, a rule set may be established that identifies transaction candidates for audit and forwards them to appropriate auditors. The auditor may also manually tag the select transactions for formal audit. These features are available with one click of a button.
Auditor Support
Auditors also have the ability to conduct spend forensics by reviewing a set of alerts pointing to possible suspicious activities. The auditor may examine past transactions for the purchaser in question, or past purchases with the vendor, category, or commodity in question. This may uncover recurrence and spending patterns, and can highlight or confirm non-compliant behavior. All of this can lead to corrective actions.
Remediation
ProCharge Auditing enables remediation of purchases that are found to have deficiencies. The remediation consists of the ability of the purchaser to include an explanation, update the transactional detail, or even attach supporting documentation. The purchaser be external to the system in which case ProCharge uses email communication to collect remediation feedback. The purchaser may also be a user with login access, in which case ProCharge offers internal Tasks mechanisms to collect the feedback.
Communication
ProCharge offers robust communication facility throughout the auditing process. Notifications are used to meet this need.
Such notification may be in form of alerts, email, or both. For example Auditors, may be notified of:
- New Audit that has been created
- Update/information from a purchase became available
- Escalation has been created
- Regular reminders to complete all opened tasks
- Summary of completed versus open tasks
Audit History and Reporting
ProCharge keep tracks of each audit’s status, all actions performed in remediation, and all comments and attachments submitted throughout the process. Comprehensive reporting is also available to show auditing trends, key users, and audit types in multiple dimensions.
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