How Falcon Bank’s Small IA Team Increased Efficiency & ROI with AuditBoard
In our Spotlight on Success series, we spoke with Melissa Gonzalez, First Vice President and Senior Auditor II at Falcon International Bank, about how her six-person internal audit team saw a 7% increase on their ROI and a 40-50% savings in headcount from implementing AuditBoard to unify operational audit and risk management in one integrated platform, as well as automating time-consuming manual tasks, streamlining communication across stakeholders, and boosting reporting capabilities. Watch the video, read the highlights, and download the full Falcon Bank Success Story PDF below.
Tell us about your role at Falcon Bank.
My name is Melissa Gonzalez, and I am the First Vice President for Falcon Bank, located in Laredo, Texas. I’ve been working for the bank for 13 years, and I’m the senior auditor supervising a group of six auditors.
What challenges did you experience before you implemented AuditBoard?
There were several challenges that we faced at Falcon Bank with our prior software for audit. We found the need to run reports electronically, and our older software did not give us the possibility to do that. We also had to do a lot of processes manually outside of our older software — so we started researching and thinking that we need something better. We need something that is more user friendly. We need to find something that is going to help us run different types of audit reports. One of the biggest challenges was that we wanted to bring all our operational audits and also the risk management part together. That was our number one goal — to have our risk management and operational audits all together in one platform.
How did you decide to implement AuditBoard?
When we started looking for vendors, we invited different vendors to come down to Laredo and show us a demo. We saw several, and really what stood out to us with AuditBoard was the fact that we could combine all our work into one solution.
Once we got the product, we were worried that they were just telling us “yes, yes, yes,” and then it would turn out that it wouldn’t really happen. Surprisingly to us, all our requests were really answered! Whenever there’s an issue or something that we don’t quite find fitting into the program, our AuditBoard customer service turns around and says, “Here it is, we’ve done it for you,” and miraculously, they’ll have given us just what we were looking for. As of today, everything that we’ve asked for, AuditBoard has done for us.
How has AuditBoard helped you work with other stakeholders in your organization?
In the past, we used to send out a huge list of items that we were pending. Chances were, if we asked them for 10 items, they’re going to send us five. With AuditBoard, if we have an item requested, we send it through the messaging system and they’re able to receive it, reply to it, and easily attach the work paper that we’re asking for. That’s one benefit where our managers have really said, “You guys are doing great.” It’s awesome.
What kind of ROI have you seen since implementing AuditBoard?
We’ve seen about a 7% increase on our ROI just based on the time that we used to take to create certain projects, to generate certain reports, to fulfill certain issue tracking items — that’s time that we’ve saved versus the amount that we would spend on AuditBoard. I’ve got to say we’ve had a very good percentage as a return on investment.
What benefits have you seen with AuditBoard?
Had we’d not had AuditBoard to communicate and perform our projects, I think it would have been a lot harder — especially with a pandemic going on. Had we been sitting at our desks, not having any software to share our information, we probably would have had a very difficult time getting our projects done. Every project is worked by at least two or three auditors at a time. We have been blessed to have this software as we go about our work. The pandemic has hurt us all, but nevertheless we continued our operations as if there was nothing wrong besides us sitting at a different home office now. If you’re considering software, you definitely want to consider AuditBoard. With what AuditBoard has done for us, I recommend it to any auditor in any industry.
