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Whether you’ve already completed your first audit or you’re planning your compliance calendar for the new year, you know that compliance is more than a bullet point on a strategy slide deck—it’s a serious investment and a process that will recur year-over-year, so you can’t drop the ball in between assessments, especially amidst an ever-evolving cyberthreat landscape. To help your organization remain safeguarded between your audit cycles, you should seek to strengthen and streamline your compliance—the good news is, there are ways to do that.

In the dynamic world of business, where compliance is becoming more important either as requested assurance from customers or a key market differentiator, more and more organizations are turning to assessment firms to help them communicate these advantages. And while some will always look at compliance in the most oversimplified, checkbox manner, many customers and regulators recognize good (and poor) quality of delivery.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Auditors. We’re an odd breed. “A necessary pain in the tuchus,” some may say. Admittedly, we’re not everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, in our 20+ years of experience, we’ve seen the word “auditor” invite various visceral responses. To be sure, organizations aren’t always enthusiastic about inviting us assessors in to do the requisite checks, despite the benefits of doing so (and despite being invited guests).

The period of September through the end of December many have nicknamed “Busy Season” for lots of fun reasons: the return of school and fall sports, endless football games on almost every night of the week, the busiest holidays of the year, and loads of family time. Perhaps less fun, Busy Season also often includes audits and attestations for many organizations wishing to deliver audit reports by the end of the calendar and fiscal years. With so much to do—not only at work but also at home—it all may seem impossible, but there actually are proven paths to a smooth end-of-year audit process that can help streamline Busy Season in at least this one respect.

Here are five steps to help successfully prepare: 1. Validate the Nature of the Request. Does your client base understand the various SOC reporting options and what they are asking of your organization from a compliance reporting perspective? Is there a connection to internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) of the services that you provide to your clients, or are you looking at general controls of a system that are relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and/or privacy? SOC 1 can oftentimes be misused by the general public as a generic reference to third party examinations. There is misconception in the marketplace; help prevent it.

The audit world isn’t as scary as people make it out to be. But there are things that you can only learn in the audit profession through experience and not in the classroom. Here are some of the biggest takeaways I learned as a first year auditor:

[NOTE: Schellman has since updated this content in a more recent article.] Think of your auditing firm like you would a long-term business partner. They are someone you will work with year after year, and they will be an integral part of setting the stage for your organization’s success. As such, the act of selecting the appropriate assessor shouldn’t be taken lightly. Here are several key qualities your organization should look for when choosing an auditing firm: