Services

Marks Consulting understands the importance of well-designed and effective safeguards in an internal control environment. The absence of such controls pose complexities when preparing timely and reliable financial reports. Management is responsible for assuring the reliability and integrity of financial statements. Due to this stewardship obligation, management must ensure operating effectiveness of internal controls. Marks Consulting helps management develop and sustain A-123, Appendix A and SOX 404 compliance programs. We apply a risk-based approach to ensure overall cost effectiveness. We leverage existing efforts to efficiently implement and effectively sustain the program. Marks Consulting helps strengthen processes to enable management to better support the organization’s objectives through improved financial management. We utilize a structured approach tailored for your organization and can train your personnel to apply cyclically for a lasting impact.

CFOs and finance departments are under pressure to provide accurate and timely detailed information to stakeholders and regulators, making efficient and effective processes critical to achieving this objective. Marks Consulting advisors can help your organization assess the quality of your planning process, optimize the analysis and streamline the reporting activities to conclude your accounting cycle. We can help standardize and automate your routine tasks to gain savings from efficiencies, reduce close cycle time and provide timely quality insights to your decision makers. With the right technology, we can enable collaboration between business units to gather and share insights. Further, we can help you determine what structure fits your operational complexities by answering questions such as, should the service be outsourced or moved to a shared service provider, should it be centralized, or should it be moved closer to the business units to rethink your operating model for a lasting impact.

Internal audit is more than an assurance activity. It can add value to your organization by integrating compliance and risk management, anticipating issues and increasing effectiveness of operations. We offer flexible solutions to fine-tune or reconstruct your internal audit function. Marks Consulting can help shape your governance and risk model, staff augment through sourcing/co-sourcing or execute specialist audit projects. We work with key stakeholders such as the audit committee, board of directors and senior management to help you gain more confidence in your overall control environment. We utilize a disciplined approach to deliver results that will help achieve strategic business goals, while identifying cost containment opportunities.

Marks Consulting firmly believes that every organization will eventually find itself in a position where it does not operate smoothly or struggles to meet changing demands of the world surrounding it. For this reason, every organization must implement a process for continuous refinement. Marks Consulting helps organizations redesign how resources are organized and operated in order to adapt to changing demands and better achieve strategic priorities. We begin the redesign efforts with an iterative assessment of structure, roles, processes, rewards, metrics, and talent. Feedback on insight drive the continuous refinement process shaping where redesign is necessary to better achieve the desired objectives of the organization. Organizational redesign can be a disruptive process to an organization when applied without guidance. Working with you and your staff, we help to manage this iterative process for change bringing experienced and creative advisors that will design and implement the redesign efforts. We utilize a systematic approach to build the feedback channels necessary to drive organizational redesign and then carefully determine what aspects of the organization need to be redesigned to avoid disruption to those areas that work well. We believe that this process starts from the top but requires participation from all levels to develop the buy-in necessary for change to be successful and provide a lasting impact.

Marks Consulting understands the critical role business processes play in the efficient and effective operation at all levels of an organization. The absence of such processes often leads to inconsistent results and faulty outcomes posing a risk to the organization. Business processes enable management to control every transaction without direct involvement. Marks Consulting helps management design business processes through our systematic assessment approach to investigating the underlying processes critical to the operation of your organization. Working collaboratively with you and your staff we define actions taken by a process owner to identify analyze and improve existing business processes within your organization. The key is understanding the current maturity and performance of a process, identifying the level of performance required, and establishing a path for achieving the desired maturity and performance.

Audit Readiness is being prepared and meeting requirements prior to an external audit. Marks Consulting can help Management document business processes, test internal controls, identify deficiencies and design effective corrective action plans. We strive to standardize business processes leveraging best practices to deliver efficient financial management in order to sustain audit readiness. We focus on identifying the key processes, procedures, transactions and accounting events with a direct impact on the financial statements to ensure successful audit outcome. Marks Consulting can help Management view requirements through the lens of an Auditor, providing insights on areas of concern and advising on improvements. We apply a structured process that aligns with requirements and is customized to address unique challenges of your organization.

Audit Response involves responding to auditor requests, and acting as a liaison between auditors and process owners. Marks Consulting can help your organization set up an infrastructure, framework and procedures to ensure a smooth process for communicating with the auditor and delivering documents to and from the auditor. We review documentation provided by process owners for completeness and ensure closure of documentation requests made by the auditor. We develop and conduct training to familiarize process owners with audit process and establish quality assurance procedures with individuals responsible for delivering documentation. We develop communication channels and serve as the conduit for communications between the auditor and process owners. Marks Consulting can play as large or small of a role as needed to address auditor requests for your organization.

Marks Consulting can help strengthen your organization’s audit ready environment by developing corrective action plans that will sustain audit readiness. We perform root cause analysis for deficiencies to ensure we get to the heart of the problem. We determine remediation steps to not only accomplish short-term goals but to achieve long-term objectives. We perform cost benefit analysis to execute corrective actions and help estimate resources to implement corrective actions. We can help your organization verify the effectiveness of remediation plans already implemented. We utilize a structured approach customized to your unique business, while leveraging best practices for known challenges.