Compas Blog

Keys to a Successful Retail Store Liquidation

The full liquidation of Circuit City was recently captured in the National Retail Federation’s November issue of Stores Magazine. The article, entitled Solid Approach to Liquidation, highlights how within two days, 115 Protiviti personnel were dispatched to Circuit City stores, and how the company served as financial adviser to the retailer’s official committee of unsecured creditors.

A key enabling technology for the field team was Compas. A store liquidation audit was written specifically for the project and each consultant entered audit information via the Web. Three iterations of the audit were written to respond to the risks that emerged surrounding inventory management practices, cash over/shorts, merchandising equipment standards / physical security, as well as general asset protection procedures related to receiving.

In total, 3,252 operational store audits and 834 investigations were completed over 3 months.  The last question in the audit prompted the user to state if an investigation was required. Once the audit was submitted, an email was immediately sent to a team of investigators based on select criteria.

According to the Vice President of Loss Prevention, at the beginning of the liquidation process advisers had suggested that Circuit City should be prepared to lose 6 percent of inventory. However, the actual figure was closer to 2 percent.

To review the story in its entirety, check out the latest issue of Stores Magazine at     http://www.stores.org/LossPrevention/2009/11/Edit03.asp.

The Latest Audit Research - Internal Auditing, Utilizing Store Self-Assessments

Protiviti launched its rebalancing study in 2005 to assess how organizations rely on their internal audit departments for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance-related activities while seeking to “rebalance” these functions to also address more traditional internal audit responsibilities. More than 600 respondents - a majority of whom are chief audit executives, audit directors or audit managers - took part in the 2009 survey and fourth edition of the study, answering questions in two categories:  “Rebalancing Strategy” and “Internal Audit Organization and Focus.” http://www.protiviti.com/go/rebalancingsurvey

The highly popular Internal Auditing Around the World series tracks the growth and evolution of the internal audit industry and its professionals, who continue to rise to the ever-expanding demands created by the complexities of managing risks, monitoring controls, improving corporate governance and capitalizing on opportunities in international markets. The fifth edition of the study was released in October of this year. http://www.protiviti.com/go/iaaroundtheworld5

When self-assessments and validation are complemented by proper training, development of remediation plans, and timely follow-up on issues identified during the self-assessment and validation audits, store self-audits can be the first step toward a progressive and cost-effective method of consistently monitoring all stores and potentially improving the bottom line. http://www.protiviti.com/en-US/Insights/Whitepapers/Industry/Pages/Utilizing-Store-Self-Assessments.aspx.

Customize your ‘Yes / No’ Questions to Increase the Efficiency of your Audit Team

Improve auditor productivity by removing unnecessary keystrokes and automating information distribution

Compas supports fifteen different question types for collecting operational audit data. One of the popular question types is the simple ‘Yes / No’ question. However, even this basic question type allows a significant amount of customization to occur in order to enhance the efficiency of your audit team.

Navigate to the audit administration tool, available via the Web, and set the following customizations:

Question notifications are set based on the result of a given question and can ensure prompt attention is paid to important issues. Distributed via email or eFax, users may set the notification template, establish rules to determine who will receive the notification and establish the triggers for distribution (ex. distribute when a desired answer is received and when an audit is approved).

Priority questions allow the user to change the nature of the question to a required or critical question. A required question must be completed prior to submitting an audit. A critical question, coupled with grade style scoring, may be used to escalate an issue quickly and inform management that a significant violation has occurred.

Pre-canned action items and comments allow the auditor to select from a list, standardizing responses to specific issues and enhancing the overall productivity of the field team.

Help text may provide on the spot suggestions, information about best practices and tips to clarify question interpretation.

Pre-answer functionality allows you to immediately answer a question when beginning an audit based on a variety of different rules. The question may immediately default to the most common response, pre-populate based on the previous audit score or the previous answer from the most recently completed audit. You are also able to pre-populate using custom imported values from an outside data feed.

Action items may be managed in a number of ways. The user may set the default number of days before an action item is due and the individual it is assigned to. You may also set a required action item for a specific question as well as a required number of actions which must be completed.

Question default options enhance the overall usability of the platform. A default priority may be set for all action items, default help text display controls the visibility of instructional text on the audit detail report, the default privacy level allows you to change access levels for a given question and the default tab option is a catch-all section that controls the visibility of specific items in the answer details box.

By taking advantage of the extended functionality of the ‘Yes / No’ question type, you can reap the benefits of a more powerful and efficient audit program. 

H1N1: Are your Employees Prepared?

Evaluating your individual store locations’ preparedness for a possible H1N1 outbreak is as simple as creating and launching a new audit. Using the Audit Builder, you can easily create, test and deploy a new audit for evaluating your H1N1 Pandemic readiness.

1.       From the admin tab, navigate to the audit administration page

2.       Create a new audit category and audit definition

3.       Select ‘full edit’ to create a new section for the audit

4.       Now select ‘add question’ to start building the audit questionnaire

Once you have built the audit, consider inviting your field team using the audit invitation functionality.

1.       Navigate to the audit definition page

2.       Select the link ’send invitations’

3.       Define the subject and body of the Invitation message

4.       Define the group of users who will receive the invitation

5.       Select ’send’

Here are some additional resources which you may find useful:

U.S. Government’s one-stop access to H1N1, avian and pandemic flu information: http://www.flu.gov/.  

World Health Organization’s (WHO) H1N1 pandemic information: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/.  

Protiviti’s Business Continuity Management (BCM) practice and pandemic risk management team: http://www.protiviti.com/en-US/Solutions/Information-Technology/Business-Continuity/Pages/Pandemic-Risk-Management.aspx.

Creative Options’ custom design of pandemic preparedness awareness materials: http://www.creativeop.com/h1n1  

I Forgot my Password…Again!

In order to reset a user’s password, follow these steps:

1. From the admin tab, navigate to the login administration page
2. Enter the name or email address of the auditor into the search criteria and click search
3. Click the reset password link where you will be prompted to enter and confirm a new password

From the login administration page, you may also deactivate / activate a user profile and manage user permissions.

Compas features GPS-Enabled Search

Allow anyone to walk into a location with historical audit information and a list of outstanding action items

All locations are geo-coded. Simply click on the “find me” feature and, by using the smartphone’s Google® Mapping and GPS functionality, Compas will default to the closest physical location.

The “find me” feature uses the GPS technology built into the Blackberry® device to find an individual’s latitude and longitude. Then, it queries the location structure to find the closest physical location to where that individual is standing and the relevant audit information.

The “find me” feature can provide visibility to your audit program for all key stakeholders across the organization and can benefit auditors and executives alike.

Imagine you are an auditor. You just pulled into the parking lot of the location you are auditing and you initiate the “find me” function on your Blackberry® device. By the time you reach the front door, you have the location up and access to previous audit scores as well as a list of all outstanding action items. You approach the Location Manager and immediately discuss the previous audit and outstanding action items prior to beginning your new audit.

Imagine you are an executive. You are planning a few unannounced location visits to understand what’s going on at the ground level and you initiate the “find me” function on your Blackberry® device. By the time you enter the location, you have access to the audits performed and a list of outstanding action items, providing intelligence that can help drive valuable conversations with location management.

Tap into the Power of Integrated Location Search

Using location search functionality to reduce navigation time

As the number of divisions, regions, districts and individual locations grows, so does the time required for visitors to find a specific location. To augment the current location navigation tool, Compas now offers the ability to search for a location by location number. Simply click the change location button to bring up the location search feature, enter a location number and click search. You will then be moved to the new location automatically.

Discover Actionable Insights with the Exception Summary Report

Quickly identify opportunities for improvement in your audit program

The exception summary report summarizes the data in your audit that is most often scored incorrectly by section and question. At anytime, you can click on the question hyperlink which will provide detailed information about the question and the answers selected.

Sorting by the exception percentage allows you to quickly see where the biggest opportunities for improvement lie. Filtering the data by start and end date allows you to hone in on issues which may be confined to a specific timeframe in your audit cycle. Additionally, you can filter the list of questions to include only critical violations, or to exclude questions for which no exceptions have occurred.

This report has dashboard representation in the form of the “Worst 5 Question Scores”. Clicking on this dashboard component or navigating from the report list summary page will help you pinpoint issues before they negatively impact your business.

Obtain Visibility into the Support Process

Submit a support request via the Web and track progress through to completion in real-time

Submit support requests by e-mail or through the web and monitor the status online. Bringing a new level of transparency to the support process, Support Suite - a web-based application - will allow you to co-manage the support resolution process. With Support Suite, you will know when a request is open, on hold (pending more detail), in progress and complete. You can escalate, add more detail and even close a request if the item is deemed no longer an issue. Additionally, you can view and manage all of your outstanding requests from one location. To submit your first support request online, go to http://support.creativeop.com, click on “submit request” and follow the steps provided.

Compas Spring 2009 Version Release: Group Administration

Manage administrative rights and access-levels according to defined groups

In order to continue to drive administrative time out of the audit process and realize additional productivity gains, the administration module of the Compas platform has been enhanced. Permissions are now managed by groups. Users are allocated to defined groups where they receive the permission level associated with that group.

• Group permission sets can now automatically receive new audits and reports without having to add new audits to each and every group
• Audit administration permissions can now be assigned by individual audit categories rather than just through a blanket privilege

Logins can be assigned to more than one group and login administration includes a number of additional related features, including:

• Conduct a search using the new criteria: group and status
• Deactivate a user from the list page and from the edit login page
• Reset a password upon login rather than auto-generating a default password
• Access an event log to view a complete list of activities performed by a given user