Introduction
In the context of an investigation into corporate products and services, I have often heard these terms (Audit and Inspection) together. But let me tell you, they are not similar. Experts who have been working in this area for years will tell you that these are two different modes of investigating products and services. Ostensibly, inspections are observation-based; they are used to identify hazards and control measures. Audits, on the other hand, are prolonged procedures that involve evaluation and examination of processes in an organization. Inspection, unlike audit, never really goes into answering the ‘why’ question related to an investigation; it keeps its concern only up to the ‘what’ question. Auditing is a complex task that encompasses several steps like planning, scheduling, executing, and reporting to get a complete version of the ongoing investigation. Inspection is usually a one-step process that simply doesn’t go into the nuances of the investigation and deals with the superficial investigation. Nevertheless, there are software applications that can support both audit and investigation, depending on the requirements, so the differences between audit and inspection software are minimal. In this blog, after elaborating on audit and inspection, I will introduce you to advanced audit and inspection software. So keep reading.
Definition of Audit and its advantages
The audit is a detailed mode of investigation into the activities and processes of the organizations through various means such as data collection, surveillance, record checking, conducting interviews, and others. Audits go through the complete documentation to ensure that the organization is compliant with internal and external policies and regulations. Audits are usually very long and time-consuming as they involve multiple steps. Audits are usually conducted by external bodies, leading to objectiveness in the process. Being an externally led initiative, it is free of any kind of bias that may arise if it were internally led. Here are some advantages of audits:
- An audit gives a complete view of the organization by taking a holistic approach to investigation. From top to bottom, it skims through every function to present a complete picture.
- By doing an audit, you can get a fair assessment of the assets and investments of an organization.
- It identifies and addresses multiple risks and also helps in fraud management by providing several checks and balances at every step in the complex processes.
- It helps build a reputation. So, if you have successfully passed an audit, you can confidently show it to different stakeholders like partners, banks, investors, and others who will now have more faith in you.
Do not delay; get audit management software right now.
Definition of Inspection and its advantages
Inspections usually have to do with fewer and less severe investigations to ensure the desired conditions of a workplace are met. It is a process based on observation that works towards increasing the safety and efficiency of an organization. To perform an inspection, officials usually take the help of the best inspection software, which has a pre-configured inspection checklist with questions based on predetermined notions. Often, inspection is used to examine a particular product or service and is usually quantitative in nature. Here are its advantages:
- Inspections are primarily aimed at identifying potential sources of hazards at the workplace to prevent accidents, illness, and loss of life.
- As it is less time-consuming and granular, it may be carried out more frequently to ensure timely and frequent scrutiny of the entities.
- It fosters trust in workers and supervisors, who feel more safe and comfortable working in an environment where inspections are frequent.
- Inspection has one more key advantage: it sets accountability in the people who feel as if they are the owners of the tasks.
So say yes to inspection management software right now.
Differences between auditing and inspection
| Comparison Parameter | AuditInspectionMethod | |
| It is usually a comprehensive, deeper, and large-scale method to do an analysis of the processes. | It is a limited, superficial, and granular mode of investigation that looks at the issues one by one. | |
| It is very time-consuming. Taking into account the various steps, it can run for days. That also makes it less frequent—maybe once a year. | They are less time-consuming and can be done frequently, maybe more than once a day, to ensure smooth operative conditions. | |
| Investigation nature | It is usually qualitative, which warrants employing tactics like data collection, interviews, and others. | It is usually quantitative and doesn’t require interviews or extensive data collection methods. |
| Structure | Being very complex and thorough, it is difficult to embody it in a predefined structure. It is free-flowing and runs at various levels and through different means. | Being less complex, it is conducted based on rigid, checklist-based methods to keep an account of products and services. |
| Investigation area | It is widespread, often including the entire organization, right from top to bottom, even including the entire management system. | It usually focuses on lower-end tasks such as workplace, equipment, and activities. |
Despite these differences, an audit software and inspection management app can very well perform these two tasks together.
What is WovVIA?
After we have understood in detail the key differences between audit and inspection, it’s time to find an audit and inspection software application that can help an organization with these things. However, you need to know that you don’t need to purchase separate tools for these two activities; a single tool will be just fine for both audit and inspection. Keeping in mind the requirements of the EHS audit and other inspections, one application that is just right for the purpose is WovVIA. It’s a cloud-based, unified, lightweight, powerful software application that will help you in every kind of audit and inspection. Here are the key features of this tool:
Key features of WovVIA
- Create audit and inspection forms with the click of a button by defining multiple answer types like free text, radio buttons, and check boxes.
- Schedule, plan, and assign audits to individuals.
- Track the progress of the audit with auto-notifications and reminders.
- Multi-layered, role-based access to reports
- Photography and videography of facts and findings
- Do a relative performance evaluation through period and location-wise data.
- Identify non-compliance, automatically log tickets, and assign them to individuals to follow up.
- Track the follow-up actions and closure of non-compliance.
- Do-it-yourself, consolidated dashboard with configurable interactive reports
Conclusion
Hopefully, I have managed to delineate the key differences between inspection and audit in this blog. Without a doubt, they both serve a very important purpose in an organization; however, their function and their output are clearly different. If you are looking for audit and inspection software, I have made your life simple by introducing you to WovVIA. This is an easy-to-use solution for small, medium, and large organizations. If you want further help on audit and inspection or want to know more about WovVIA, then feel free to contact us. One more thing: this software application is available in a FREE-FOREVER plan, which means you can try it for free for as long as you want without paying anything for it.