A supply chain audit is a detailed examination of your supply chain. The functions and benefits of supply chain audits include: Identifying risks in your supply chain so you can protect your revenue and reputation. Finding and stopping fraud and systematic errors. Improving supply chain performance.
Our Supply Chain Audit focusses on the supply chain management process including the policies, Organizational and process risks, cost control and performance management measures. A supply chain audit is a measurement tool for compliance, validation and progress. It can indicate to a business the efforts needed to build a more sustainable supply chain. Our audits will help organizations understand their suppliers and how they give visibility and transparency into their practices. For suppliers, audits keep organizations vigilant, acting as a method for continuous improvement to find non-compliances, and to provide an opportunity to correct them.
When auditors detect a data discrepancy, they should first investigate whether it is due to an honest mistake. Vendor training or procedural changes can reduce repeated errors. If an error is not just a mistake, auditors can search for fraud. Acting almost like a journalist, they should be somewhat sceptical of sources of data, track down leads, and search for hidden activities. Auditors must not live near the vendor, which could corrupt their judgment.
Using a supply chain data log, auditors can find the records of such changes. They can also check that the values match in the latest version of a document, such as a purchase order, that is logged in both your ERP and EDI systems. In fact, some systems can perform these checks automatically.
You could also implement a supply chain auditing blockchain technology, which creates a tamper-resistant data log of electronic activities across all your vendors.