Continuous Control Monitoring Tools With Alessa

For organizations looking to implement and enhance Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM), Alessa is the solution that enables management to assess the effectiveness of controls and detect any associated risks, improve business processes, provide data to support decision-making and increase the cost-effectiveness of controls.

Alessa screens 100 percent of accounts and transactions and provides visibility into the performance of programs and whether they are meeting the goals of the organization.

Using advanced analytics the solution can also detect non-compliant transactions and complex fraud schemes. Configurable workflows and case-management tools ensure that any high-risk activities are properly investigated and all remediation activities are tracked for future audits.

Why Do You Need Continuous Controls Monitoring Tools?

Purchase Cards

Continuously monitoring corporate purchase or credit cards allows organizations to review all transactions and assess the performance of the program, assess liabilities and detect personal purchases, anomalies and instances of non-compliance.

Accounts Payable

Continuously reviewing accounts payable allows organizations to enforce discounts, block payments that exceed approval limits, detect duplicate invoices or payments, and prevent payments for unapproved or completed projects.

Payroll

Monitoring payroll controls ensures that the correct people and amounts are paid after every pay cycle. Ensure that overtime, gross and net pays are as expected, there are no ghost employees and vendors are not on your payroll list.

Retail Monitoring

With tight margins and a high loss rate, retail monitoring allows organizations to improve the bottom line. Review all transactions, assess the performance of stores, verify that discounts comply to policies, and reduce losses due to fraud, waste and abuse.

P2P and Vendor Management

Overpayments, false invoicing and theft of inventory are major sources of fraud. Continuous monitoring allows companies to detect duplicate vendors, suspicious payments, matches between employee and vendor bank accounts and more.

Tax and Customs Compliance

Complying with customs and tax laws within multiple jurisdictions can be complicated and time-consuming. Continuously monitoring for compliance reduces the risk of delays and substantial fines by authorities.

Case Study

Despite being one of Mexico’s most well-run retailers, razor-thin margins, increasing expenses and missing, unsold or transferred merchandise were concerns for Grupo Comercial Control. To control costs and increase profitability, the retailer turned to Alessa to:

• Prevent overpayments of social insurance, overtime and unauthorized expenses
• Reconcile account activities in the general ledger
• Reduce operating expenses by 80% by detecting damaged or missing merchandise and improving the inventory process
• Discover potential supplier discounts due to delays and account aging
• Determine which merchandise and branches pose a risk to profitability by reviewing stock movement in all warehouses, distribution centers, department stores and boutiques

Capabilities

Controls Monitoring

Alessa uses rule-based analytics to analyze key activities to ensure they comply with internal processes and controls as well as generate alerts for non-compliant or suspicious entries.

The automated examination and monitoring of business processes and activities provides intelligence on the root causes of anomalies. It also creates visibility for company policies and engages the entire organization in a culture of collaborative compliance with the goal of prevention.

Metrics & Insights

Alessa can work with almost any data file, allowing organizations to have a holistic view of their data. Configurable dashboards track key metrics and program performance as well as allow staff to drill down into the alerts.

Configurable

With Alessa, organizations can select the functionality they need. Permission-based functionality allows different users to access only the information they need to perform their responsibilities.

Investigation Tools

Alessa offers configurable and intuitive workflows to guide processes and investigations. Enterprise search capabilities allow for easy search of data within internal and external sources while case management offers a collaborative approach to investigations, compliance and decision-making. Alessa also has the option to learn from past decisions and repeat them to reduce the number of false positives and burden on investigators and managers.

Download our brochure to learn more about Alessa’s continuous controls monitoring tools, and check out our article on the differences between continuous controls monitoring vs. continuous auditing.