Case Study: Remediating Audit Findings for an Ad and Marketing Technology Company

Situation

A U.S.-based advertising and marketing technology company faced significant challenges in remediating audit findings related to their internal control environment. The company received multiple material weaknesses and deficiencies in its prior and current annual audit and needed to address the root causes of these control failures, rationalize existing controls, and implement new controls to close gaps identified by their external audit firm.

The control issues affected most business processes, including entity-level controls, and extended across financial and revenue flows. In addition, IT General Controls issues were identified across homegrown and SaaS applications responsible for tracking, accounting, and reporting revenue.  The existing control environment relied heavily on manual processes, which impacted the realization of value for accounting and reporting software solutions.

Solution

Altum’s practical and flexible approach to addressing the audit findings focused on prioritizing the issues that needed to be remediated first and then planning and executing deep discovery sessions for each related process and control that were found to be insufficient.   In doing so, we were able to uncover the root cause of each issue and develop fixes that were both efficient and achievable.

To address the audit findings, Altum led an initiative to rationalize controls and develop tests for both design and operational effectiveness. This effort included documenting the improved controls and control activities. By collaborating with management, Altum ultimately ensured that the client’s external audit was satisfied that all previously noted weaknesses had been addressed.

Results

Altum’s approach of working hand in hand with key stakeholders across the IT systems, business processes, and controls led to a successful outcome of remediating all audit findings and the client obtaining a clean opinion on the control environment. In addition, Altum led to the implementation of AuditBoard to manage control matrices, owners, evidence, and testing to provide additional protection against similar issues in the future.