Assessments – A new approach

Given our ongoing commitment to helping businesses achieve operational efficiencies through our Apps we have redesigned how assessments for CORE Elements (Risks, Controls, Indicators and Actions) are provided by users in CoVi Analytics App Suite.

Overview

PREVIOUS APPROACH – Rolling basis

Previously, the assessment dates were determined based on two factors: the last assessment date AND Assessment frequency. Say for a quarterly control, if an assessment was performed on the 15th of March, the next assessment was automatically set as the 15th of June.

This approach offered flexibility for the business since most CORE Elements for a business are expected to be assessed at regular intervals irrespective of the assessment date. However, there were some challenges with this approach:

• Inflexible: Some CORE Elements have specific review dates (e.g. Board Meetings). The previous approach was not flexible enough to allow users to set specific dates when the assessment need to be performed;
• Providing updates: Updates to exsiting assessments were captured as new assessments which re-calculated the next assessment date. For instance, if a user wanted to provide an update to their 15th March assessment on the 25th of April, the new assessment date will be re-calculated to the 25th of July.

NEW APPROACH – Assessment slots

To address some of these challenges a new approach has been adopted that is based on assessment slots. As part of this upgrade, you will also note that the assessment frequencies have been updated from a simple frequency (e.g. Quarterly) to a frequency with an anchor point (e.g. Quarterly May 15th).

How it works: Based on the new frequency information and the last completed assessment:

#1 – Four future assessment slots are created based on the assessment frequency and the last assessment.

#2 – Owners and admins can update these assessment slots, to align with any hard deadlines in the business – e.g. Board Meetings where they are used as controls.

#3 – When performing the assessment, the users are no longer asked to provide the date of assessment (see left image), instead users are told which assessment they are completing. Under the new approach, users cannot skip an assessment ; i.e. in the example under #1 above, May’s assessment cannot be completed until the Feb assessment is completed.

#4 – Providing updates to existing assessments are made in the Track and Trends that can be found at the bottom of the Cards page. Note: updates can only be made by the Reviewer/Owner of the CORE Element and no workflow is triggered for updates.

#5 – Admins only: Admin users can also set Assessment Windows. Assessment windows determine how far in advance can users complete assessments.

In the example below, the Assessment window for quarterly controls is set as 45 days and for annual controls is 93 days. This means that the control due on the 15th Apr cannot be assessed until early March. Similarly, the annual control due on the 30th Jul can only be assessed from May onwards.

If a user tries to update an assessment outside this window, they will find the Prepare button disabled.

The assessment windows can be set in the config panel by admin users like so. Please note the assessment window is set in days.