How Daikin Australia’s small internal audit team delivers big insights

Founded in Osaka in 1924, Daikin is the world’s largest air conditioner manufacturer and one of Australia’s most trusted names in air conditioning. With over 50 years of heating and cooling Australian homes under its belt, Daikin Australia has grown rapidly — both organically and through acquisition. In turn, the audit work of the Risk and Assurance team has grown exponentially.

Vincent Verlinde, National Risk and Assurance Manager at Daikin Australia, leads a small internal audit team of three in assessing internal controls and compliance for the company’s 39 offices, factories, warehouses and trade centres across Australia.

In addition to an expansive plan of regular assessments, Verlinde’s team also conducts special one-off audits where no predefined risks, control objects or control activities exist. This places a significant burden on the team to not only assess a large volume of controls each year, but also present insightful reporting and have the agility to address unexpected risks that may emerge during the year.

But by adopting Diligent Internal Audit Management and Diligent ACL Analytics solutions, Verlinde’s team was able to automate routine processes, allowing them to halve the resource time they used to spend on repetitive audits. This equips them with the bandwidth to perform continuous risk assessments and provide on-demand insights, giving the business an edge in today’s fast-evolving risk landscape.

“The time we save allows us to do things we previously weren’t able to do. Previously, we would be busy with the J-SOX audit, ISO audits and so forth, and there wouldn’t be much time left in the audit plan,” says Verlinde. “Now, these only take up half of our resource time for the year, which means we can use the other half to work on ad hoc issues that come up or concerns raised by management.”

Listen to Verlinde’s story to learn how Daikin Australia used Diligent to achieve:

• 50% reduction in resource spend on repetitive audits
• 50% less travel time for sample selections
• The ability to deliver deeper insights to the board, audit committee and broader organisation