Understanding an audit management system

An audit management system can be understood as a set of audit systems that an organization puts in place to ensure that it meets its objectives. All organizations need to have their own audit management systems. An audit management system is a system that facilitates the management of its audit capabilities.

We can understand audit management systems as being a set of processes and methods that an organization puts in place to manage its audit procedures. This is distinct and different from a management system audit, which is essentially an audit of the management practices of a corporation and is governed by provisions of ISO 19011:2011.

The different varieties of an audit management system

Back to audit management systems: These are the processes and systems whose audits relate to the organization's business and services. Hence, these audits have to address all the aspects of the organization's products and processes.

So, to ensure this, an organization carries out three broad varieties of audits, although additional ones can be appended to them based on the organization's needs:
- Audit of the product
- The product audit can also include service, if the organization has a service to offer and not a physical product. Product audit involves an assessment of the company's products or services to ensure that they meet set requirements relating to quality, specifications and customer expectations and requirements
- Auditing of the process
- Another part of the audit management system; the process audit looks at the way in which the product or service was manufactured or delivered. This part of an audit management system takes into account a wide variety of factors such as the internal and external factors that go into making the product, the raw materials used, their quality, and other resources that go into the product and the methods employed to make these.
- Auditing of the system
- An audit management system also has to audit the system, i.e. the adherence to the company's vision and mission, policies, its ability to honor contractual commitments, its compliance with regulatory requirements relating to the environment, and so on.
What is the need for audit management systems?

Having its systems and procedures audited bestows benefits to an organization: