In our Spotlight on Success series, Andrew Ganey, the Director of Internal Audit and Chief Audit Executive for Ruiz Foods, shares how implementing AuditBoard’s connected risk platform was a top priority for him in his new role when looking to streamline and improve processes for a remote team.
Hear how Ruiz Foods — known for their El Monterey and Tornado brand products, among others — sees AuditBoard as not just a software solution, but also a strong partner, as well as how the fully-remote team:
- Quickly onboarded the intuitive software little team training, saving administrative efforts.
- Leverages a single system of record with the business to save time and money.
- Uses real-time data to better engage with executive stakeholders.
Tell us about your journey to implement an audit and risk management solution at Ruiz Foods.
“Ruiz Foods is going through a period of rapid change and growth right now. When I started in my role in early 2021, one of the first questions I asked was about audit technology. I used AuditBoard for about five years when I was with Post. The Ruiz team had another audit tool at the time — a lot of our IT systems were still on-premises, and the tool hadn’t really been used for the past year. I immediately worked with our CFO and our Audit Chair to move towards a technology partner. We started the RFP process with AuditBoard top of mind, but evaluated a few other tools to make sure AuditBoard was still a fit. It was — by miles — still our top choice”
What was your vision for how technology could improve how you do your work?
“I wanted to make sure that I’d be able to give real-time insights to our C-suite and board immediately on the key issues we were finding in our audits. I also wanted to make sure that I had visibility into what our team was producing, knowing that I was remote and they were remote for the vast majority of our audit work. I wanted to make sure we had a single source where we were all working as we really started to ramp up our audit activities throughout the course of the year. I obviously wanted to make sure that translated into savings for the organization — time, administrative effort, and just ease of use for our business.”
What early wins have you seen in the months since implementing AuditBoard?
“We recently finished both our implementation for OpsAudit, which I really needed for the internal audit department, and the RiskOversight module for our enterprise risk assessment, kicking off next year. The biggest thing we realized right away was being able to get all of our open issues from prior audits into the tool, even from before my time, allowing us to see and effectively manage issue remediation. We’ve found in the last four months with AuditBoard our issue closure rate is accelerating.”
“We’re saving time, which is money — especially in a co-source environment. We’re about nine months in and already seeing benefits from an issue follow-up perspective, and being able to shift that time into other resources.”
What feedback have you received from business users during the adoption process?
“Feedback from our business users has been excellent. The ease of use has shown itself in we’re able to have them use single sign on, and they’re able to get in there without much training, because it’s simple to understand. The adoption rate has been great. We haven’t had any concerns or complaints or questions. We really didn’t spend any time training them either, which was the best part. The lack of the administrative time that we have to spend as a small department — that’s remote as well — has been one of the best features.”
How has RiskOversight helped you engage with senior stakeholders?
“Our purchase of AuditBoard originally stemmed from an operational place — I needed OpsAudit in place to be able to manage the audits that we were delivering on and get results in a more timely and efficient manner. By linking to other modules like RiskOversight, you start to really bring the business into the fold. They start to understand some of these real-time issues more broadly than what a presentation might show. We’ve now got our General Counsel involved. We’ve got our CEO, CFO, and even our audit chairs in the platform. They’re starting to be able to see this data as we get it in a real-time format, and ask questions about it more quickly than during each quarter’s audit committee.”
What has the collaboration and engagement been like with the AuditBoard team?
“Leading a new internal audit department, I knew I needed a strong partner in my audit solution for my overall risk assessment and risk monitoring process. I knew that was AuditBoard, from my five years of experience with them beforehand. I knew that the business was also going to gain value from that partnership. I really think of AuditBoard as a partner, and not just a software vendor, because the collaboration with the entire team has helped us reach new heights and achieve things that I don’t think I would’ve been able to do otherwise.”
