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Sterling Audit Tender

The technology behind your Audit Tender. 

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Sterling Audit Tender

  • Best practice user guides on the use of data room technology during an Audit Tender
  • A Pre-populated index highlighting the key documentation needed by tendering firms
  • Bespoke Q&A module enabling full disclosure during the review stage
  • Expert consultancy available from our industry experienced team

The world of audit is changing, European regulations requiring companies to change their audit provider every twelve years is one reason; but perhaps of greater impact is investor pressure on company boards to look beyond their current auditor. Several large multinational companies have not changed their auditor for many years (in some cases over 100 years)

The investor community are looking to Company Boards and Audit Committees to ensure the audit firm provides a robust and independent audit opinion. The multiple audit scandals over the last twenty years have undermined confidence in the Audit process and will inevitably drive further legislation.

Sterling VDR have supported several Audit Tender processes in recent years, indeed we provided the data room solution for what is arguably the largest Audit Tender in living memory, namely the Nestle SA audit tender process performed in 2019.

Sterling is proud of our support to the Nestle process, from providing training to the Nestle Teams on how to load information to the data room and address questions raised by the participating firms; to training over 500 members of the audit firms on how to navigate the data and raise questions in the data room.

Obviously, an Audit Tender process is new for many of those tasked with defining and managing it, even a search of the internet will provide little guidance, to help address this blank space, Sterling have developed a bespoke VDR solution to support you on your own Audit Tender Journey.

Key to a successful Audit Tender is your preparation, our tool has examples of some of the documents you will need to prepare, this is essential to ensuring you do not start your journey alone but are supported by the wider Finance community in your organisation along with the full engagement of the audit firms who participate.

The tool contains an example of a data room index, you may feel that is too much information to share, however, to quote the project manager of the Nestle Audit Tender “the quality and completeness of your data room is demonstrated by how many questions you subsequently receive from the firms, we got nine and two of those were related to files that could not be opened”

We also share examples of the internal management briefing to be shared across your finance teams and the initial briefing to the competing audit firms.

These briefing are key to defining the quality of your tender process, potentially your own teams across the world will need to engage with the various potential auditors and to do this they need to fully understand the tender process and what is expected of them.

The briefing to the firms is as important as it sets out your companies’ expectations and supports the firms in planning their engagement to the process.

The Nestle Project Manager has also provided a document that outlines his key learnings from the tender process he ran that may prove helpful to you.

At Sterling our goal is to provide a secure, user friendly data room solution, one that is both intuitive and demonstrates to the firms you grant access to that your company takes the process seriously and want all the participating audit firms to know you are seeking a fair, transparent, and balanced tender process.

We hope you find the tool helps you on your journey and facilitates everything you aspire to achieve from your Audit Tender Selection Process.

To speak to an expert, please contact us on the form below.