How IVC Evidensia Achieved a Single Source of Truth for Control Documentation

In our Spotlight on Success series, Jonathon Hawes, Head of Internal Controls at IVC Evidensia, shares how having a single source of truth for the control environment has boosted efficiency and collaboration with key stakeholders. Headquartered in Bristol, UK, IVC Evidensia is a leading veterinary care provider with a network of clinics, hospitals, and out-of-hour centers in around 2,500 locations across 20 countries. Hear how this team is driving alignment on risks and controls across the business by switching from a manual environment to AuditBoard, including:

• Leveraging AuditBoard to bring all control documentation into a single source of truth.
• Getting prepared for compliance with the UK Corporate Governance Code by rolling out self-certification using AuditBoard workflows.
• Collaborating effectively with internal stakeholders on issues and controls due to AuditBoard’s intuitive user interface.

Tell us a little about IVC Evidensia, and some of the challenges you faced in your previous manual audit environment. 

“IVC Evidensia is a veterinary company. We acquire clinics and bring them into our centralized function, which allows the clinics to focus on providing great care to animals and their owners.”

“Our goal was really to move away from manual testing and manual processes into a more automated workflow, as well as using data analytics and AI to support the control function — and ultimately, our responsibility to report to the Board and the Audit Committee on the effectiveness of the internal control environment.”

How has centralizing your control documentation in AuditBoard helped you prepare for compliance with the UK Corporate Governance Code?

“We implemented AuditBoard, which has given us the ability to have all of our documentation in one place, to be able to easily change direction when we need to on our controls, and to facilitate the reporting… for the CFO and the Audit Committee.”

“AuditBoard is really becoming our central hub for all of our control documentation — not just finance. Going forward, we have to be in a place of being certain around our financials, certain around our control environment, and in compliance with the UK Corporate Governance Code. We’re in a place now where we have self-certification rolled out utilizing AuditBoard workflows.” 

How has AuditBoard’s connected risk platform enabled your team to collaborate effectively with the business? 

“We’ve driven accountability through AuditBoard that wasn’t there before. When things went wrong [in the past], no one was held responsible, no one was accountable — and that was purely due to the speed of growth. But now we have to change that and we’ve been able to do so, especially with the support of the finance executives.”

“There’s a couple of key things that really stand out. One is how easy it is to use, not only for the internal controls team, but for the business and for finance. In fact, today someone emailed me saying that it was a really easy tool and that they got their self-attestations done extremely quickly — which is really nice feedback to have. The business is saving on average 50 to 80 hours per audit because all the evidence is there in AuditBoard.” 

How have you leveraged having a single source of truth in AuditBoard to gain alignment with internal and external stakeholders?

“I think it’s incredibly important. We’re aligned on what we’re doing and what we’re all facing as a business. We all need to be adding value. We all need to be delivering on the things that bring the most benefit to the company — and the starting point is ‘What are the biggest risks across the business?‘” 

“What AuditBoard allowed us to do is bring everything into one place. We now have a system not only from a control documentation standpoint that documents what our controls are, who our control owners are, who the exec owner is, but also tracking that through to issues — they become significantly easier now, the way we manage it. Previously, for issues we had an Excel spreadsheet and we had to identify what was coming due, we had to email them, set time up, go through all of this process. Now, the owner in AuditBoard goes into AuditBoard and provides the update as it’s coming due, with notifications sent out to them when the items are coming up. I think it’s incredibly important that we have that one source of truth.”