Business risk (contd..)

Corporate governance services

Today your organization's stakeholders are seeking unprecedented levels of corporate accountability, while placing enormous responsibilities and seeking great expectations from your roles. At Grant Thornton, we understand that your organization will need guidance to achieve its mission. Your game is business success - our role is to map the winning course.

Grant Thornton's Business Risk Services in India has undertaken substantial research and partnered with member Firms in over 100 countries, to develop a suite of focused products, which specifically focus on good corporate governance practices.

While our specific findings, recommendations and deliverables are unique for each and every client, our team provides an objective, unbiased and comprehensive view of their business. Our analysis is conducted by a team of professionals who have years of business experience and considerable expertise in assessing and evaluating opportunities and the inherent risks that accompany them.

As the importance of corporate governance and accountability in India increases, Company's are in search of a best-fit business risk solution. Grant Thornton offers you a range of solutions that are based on global best practices and tailored to meet your specific requirements.

• Clause 49 advisory;
• SoX 404 advisory;
• Legal compliance and reporting framework;
• CXO specific services;
• Enterprise-wide risk management;
• Decision support systems;
• Fraud vulnerability assessment; and
• Organizational change management.

Grant Thornton's governance, risk and compliance services address the rapid changes occurring in the market and in the professional services environment. We help you understand the requirements and implement the right corporate governance framework. The goal is a sustainable process that enables you to control costs and achieve efficiencies in subsequent years.

Internal audit services

A long with the enhanced profile for Internal Audit come far greater expectations for fresh thinking and a more challenging approach with which to address key risks. At the same time, the ever increasing requirement for organizations to adopt and demonstrate good corporate governance practices is forcing a change in approach to control assessment in order to fulfill both compliance and operational demands. Using a risk-based approach, a skilled Internal Audit function can provide the necessary focus to co-ordinate an organisation's response to these new demands.

For many organizations, the range of skills needed to address wider strategic and operational risks associated with Organization Structures, Business Plans, Treasury, Compliance, Procurement and IT system, is simply too wide to be found in a small team.

Fulfilling modern expectations of Internal Audit will most inevitably result in an imbalance between resource and internal expertise. Through the delivery of solutions geared to meeting your needs, be they fully outsourced, joint sourced, peer review or internal audit advisory services, we can reduce this imbalance.

Our methodology is designed to support your needs at any stage, whether it involves setting up and delivering an entire Internal Audit function or building on work already performed and providing the resource to complete the strategic audit plan you may already have in place.

Joint sourcing - Aims to blend your low level staff resource with our expertise. We give you access to high level project management and a range of specialist skills, which cannot be retained in an internal function without considerable investment. Theses skills are backed up by the latest thinking reflecting best practice.

Peer review - For areas where the level of assurance required or the level of complexity of the process is less challenging we suggest our peer review approach- using your resources trained by us to deliver a program designed and monitored by our Internal Audit specialists to meet your levels of comfort. As a part of this model we also provide implants to strengthen the resources available with your internal audit department.

Self assessment - We also develop and deploy Control Self Assessment questionnaires to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the controls and also to create awareness about controls and control responsibilities amongst process owners.

Internal audit manual - Internal Audit departments also require Standard Operating Procedures like any other department to ensure that the department's vision and mission are understood correctly and also to ensure consistency in execution.

Training and sensitization workshops - Our specialists train your internal audit department in emerging and best practices in internal audit, standards in Internal Audit specified both by the Institute of Internal Auditors- Florida and now also by the Institute of Chartered Accountant of India, which covers planning documentation, audit evidence etc.

Technology risk services

Business IT Transformation & Strategy

• cost optimisation and financial management
• strategy formulation and reviews
• identification of automation opportunities in the value chain
• vendor selection
• contract review and development for IT outsourcing

ERP Advisory

• strategy and requirements alignment to business
• blueprint definition
• security control framework
• vendor selection
• pre and post ERP implementation reviews
• implementation assistance
• license optimization reviews

IT Project Advisory

• project management for IT initiatives
• project estimation review
• project lifecycle management
• PMO Consulting
• portfolio Management

Internal Audit

• comprehensive ITGC testing
• IT trainings for business and IT teams on best practices and standards/compliances

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

• development and review
• IT systems, processes and tools harmonisation

IT Risk & Compliance

• Sarbanes Oxley (SOX)
• enterprise risk management
• information security reviews
• compliance reviews for various standards/compliances (ISO, PCI, HIPAA)
• network and IT infrastructure security and controls reviews
• SAS 70 attestation
• business continuity and disaster recovery
• SAM framework review

IT Forensics

• third party revenue assurance reviews
• IT fraud investigations
• data preserving solutions

IT Due Diligence

• IT Infrastructure and applications reviews for due diligence and IT valuation services
• identification of IT investment requirements

Financial risk services

Businesses can chose from a diverse range of risk management approaches to identify the one that fits them the best to ensuring that compliance is a natural by-product and not the primary driver. While the regulatory dimensions of risk management are growing at an unprecedented pace, it is our understanding of the link between risk, capital and performance that benefits our clients.

Effective risk and capital management protects the capital of the Firm, avoids financial distress, and maintains financial performance of the Firm within bounds acceptable to shareholders and debtholders. If your risk management framework is effectively conceived and implemented it will avoid eroding the financial capability of the Firm to seize opportunity.

The Basel II and the Capital Requirements Directive demands appropriate levels of sophistication in risk quantification appropriate to the size and complexity of the Company's risk profile. At the same time, the need to demonstrate an embedded approach requires Company's to place risk management at the very top of their agenda and consider widespread governance risk and assurance regimes.

Our services cover the following areas for Enterprise, Credit, Market and Operational Risks and also risks associated with Investment Mid Offices:

• Risk framework design and implementation;
• Organization risk information and management structures,
• Risk quantification, stress testing and scenario analysis;
• RCSA interpretation;
• RBI, SEBI, IRDA guidelines, Basel II, MIFID and Solvency II preparedness assessment; and
• Performance benchmarking against Global Investment Performance Standards.
• Procedures for Investment strategy & product development, Trade deal execution,
• Performance attribution

SAS 70 services

With the maturity of the outsourcing industry in many developing countries across the globe, Companies are reducing their hesitance to offshore critical business processes to these countries. As a result of this trend, there is increasing pressure on service providers to display their commitment to controlled business environments while user organizations demand additional comfort on their business processes which are no longer fully in their direct control.

Service organizations are generally in compliance with a large number of quality industry standards, however, these certifications are not sufficient to address some of the key financial related concerns of users.

Grant Thornton's dedicated SAS 70 team offers users and service organizations a group of services that can be tailored to meet the needs of all stake holders.

• Type I and Type II attestation services;
• Service specific entity wide coverage for the service organization; and
• Pre-readiness assessments.

Business process risk services

Organizations today are operating in a fundamentally changed environment due to regulatory and competitive changes. There are ever-mounting pressures from financial markets, regulatory agencies, boards of directors and senior management to provide data faster and more accurately, cut costs, drive profitability and make financial reports more transparent.

Grant Thornton's Business Process Risk Services can help your company improve the value of its business processes by shifting the focus from tactical to the strategic. The methodology used addresses people, processes and technology and focuses on improving key performance statistics that management has determined.

The specialized component approach focuses on specific issues and problems that you face and our approach is tailored to ensure that attention to detail is maintained across all the business processes associated with the identified problem.

With Grant Thornton's assistance, your organisation can move to improved practices, enhancing its value to internal and external customers through:

• Process specific reviews;
• Issue and conflict resolution;
• Key performance driver identification and monitoring; and
• Benchmarking services.

Business process enhancement services

Business Performance Enhancement Solutions can assist you in achieving profitable growth by undertaking structured initiatives that can transform the way your organization functions. In many organisations, the secret to profitable growth lies in the integration of operational strategy, functional design, operational efficiency and program management.

Our services are focused at improvements in your organization's performance using a framework delivering profitable growth and maintaining or improving the customer satisfaction levels. Our team of professionals can help you achieve your business goals and growth by:

• Identifying key performance enhancement drivers based on your business strategy and objectives;
• Identifying gaps between current performance and desired state;
• Develop improvement strategies to achieve the desired state; and
• Project manage implementation of improvement strategies.

Our services primarily focus on improving performance parameters in the areas of revenue, cost, quality, time, working capital and fixed assets management.

Standard operating procedures

Companies today are growing at exceptional rates, especially in developing economies, and this poses a number of challenges related to multi-location presence, diverse organization structure across locations, absence of comprehensive authority level matrix, stand alone accounting and other systems all of which result in diverse practices and processes. Standardization of operations across offices, manufacturing units and service centers is important both from an internal efficiency as well as external customer satisfaction perspective.

Grant Thornton's services focus on various tiers on standardization of business that help you decide what level your Company is ready for and also allow you to plan a phased approach to business process standardization. Our services include:

• Pre-standardization diagnostic;
• Authority level matrix development;
• Policies and procedures;
• Business process documentation and desk top procedures;
• Management Reporting Systems
• Process change implementation assistance; and
• Workshops and sensitization training.