Scaling Growth: Leveraging Internal Audit and Outsourcing for Sustainable Success

In 2022, Ireland achieved double-digit growth, and its GDP is projected to remain on a solid growth path in 2023 and 2024. The country has outperformed all other economies in recent years, and we are particularly excited to see many of our clients performing exceptionally well in their most recent financial years.

While this is undoubtedly a good thing, for many Irish businesses, this growth brings new challenges such as:

• The need to scale operations to meet increasing demand
• Finding and retaining skilled talent
• Reducing dependencies on key individuals
• Overload of certain departments and firefighting
• Outgrowing the systems and infrastructure in place
• Financial management pressures
• Designing new systems and processes
• Additional regulatory and compliance requirements

Some of the key challenges that appear common to most Irish businesses include hiring and training new employees who can contribute to the company's growth, implementing efficient processes and systems, and expanding the existing systems and infrastructure.

Investment in these areas requires careful financial planning, strategic decision-making and the agility to navigate through these challenges effectively. Companies need to adapt and evolve their strategies to address these challenges and seize opportunities for sustainable growth.

This can be hard to do in parallel with providing exceptional customer service and building strong relationships with new and existing customers.

At Crowe we pride ourselves on delivering hard-working, practical solutions to all our clients' business challenges. In the current climate we are helping many of our clients tackle these challenges through the provision of outsourced bookkeeping and internal audit services.

Internal audit can help by:

• Assessing risks faced by the organisation, including operational, financial, compliance and strategic risks
• Evaluating controls and processes and providing recommendations to mitigate risks and improve risk management practices
• Proactively identifying issues, monitoring the effectiveness of control measures, and addressing emerging risks in a timely manner
• Enhancing stakeholder confidence, including investors, board members, regulators, and other external parties
• Providing valuable insights, recommendations, and assurance on key areas of concern to aid in making informed decisions, strengthening internal controls and improving overall organisational performance

If you find you are spending a significant amount of time and effort managing people, responding to emails or performing routine tasks instead of focusing on your "real work," we would recommend that you look at your processes. Internal audit plays a pivotal role in helping management improve controls, processes, governance and risk management.

Our team at Crowe provides a dedicated and fast solution that's suited to your requirements. Perhaps, a focused review of certain systems controls and policies alone to identify areas for process improvement and operational efficiency by analysing workflows and procedures would be enough to see a sizeable improvement in working practices.

Having a robust internal audit function in place assures the board, audit committee, regulators and other stakeholders that risks are being effectively identified and managed.

Outsourcing the internal audit function can help by:

• Assisting with routine accounting so that businesses can focus on their core activities and strategic initiatives
• Being more cost-effective than hiring an in-house bookkeeper as services can easily adapt to changing business needs
• Making it easier to budget and control costs – fees can be charged based on the volume of work or as a flat fee
• Providing you with access to the expertise and accuracy of professionals who are well-versed in accounting principles and best practices
• Improving compliance and regulatory adherence

Whether you wish to outsource all or part of your finance function, we will devise an appropriate package based on your needs and seamlessly integrate it into your business. Outsourcing allows you to concentrate on your business while we manage your everyday accounting needs.

Our team will provide a cost-effective solution to ensure your compliance and reporting needs are addressed in a timely manner, enabling you to focus on the delivery of quality and service to your customers.