Enterprise e-commerce company transforms audit planning with Grant Thornton and AuditBoard

A leading enterprise e-commerce company with a large-scale global marketplace operation faced mounting difficulty building a credible and defensible audit plan. With more than 150 auditable entities tracked in AuditBoard’s OpsAudit module and spread across multiple legal structures, the internal audit team struggled with:

• Inconsistent risk assessments year over year
• Incomplete documentation, leaving critical judgments undocumented
• Overreliance on intuition instead of evidence-based analysis

Much of the planning relied on qualitative factors that were not well-documented, raising concerns from regulators and the audit committee. As regulatory scrutiny intensified, audit leadership needed a more robust, transparent, and data-driven process to justify audit coverage decisions.

Modernizing the risk assessment process

Grant Thornton, a strategic alliance partner of AuditBoard, collaborated with the internal audit team to modernize the risk assessment and planning process by extending the power of AuditBoard with a custom risk assessment solution built in Excel that integrated directly with the OpsAudit platform.

Key enhancements included:

• Integrated quantitative and qualitative scoring. The team blended quantitative metrics with qualitative inputs, such as executive concerns and emerging technology risks.
• Residual risk calculation. The team factored in control strength to prioritize high-risk areas.
• AuditBoard integration. Risk scoring, control evaluations, and supporting comments were automatically uploaded back into the platform, enabling entity-level insights and streamlined planning.
• Scenario-based planning. They generated defensible audit plans, contingency options, and a multi-year roadmap that aligned with resource availability.
• Enhanced reporting with Power BI. They enabled dynamic analysis of entity categorization, audit scheduling, year-over-year performance, and portfolio coverage trends.

Key business outcomes

The transformation repositioned the company’s audit function as a forward-looking, evidence-based program. Key results included:

• Credibility with stakeholders. Regulators and the audit committee gained confidence in the rigor and transparency of the audit plan.
• Shift to rolling planning. They moved from static, one-year cycles to a portfolio-based, multi-year approach.
• Optimized resource allocation. Staff capacity was directed to the highest-priority risks.
• More impactful reporting. Executive updates became sharper, data-driven, and actionable.
• Future-ready framework. They adapted to evolving risks, regulatory changes, and organizational growth.

Learn how Grant Thornton can help modernize your internal audit function, in partnership with AuditBoard's OpsAudit.

About the authors

AuditBoard is the leading AI-powered GRC platform, transforming the way the world’s biggest companies manage risk. More than 50% of the Fortune 500 trust AuditBoard to elevate their audit, risk, and compliance management.