The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE National Insurance Board (NIB)  has been able to “close some control gaps” with help from a niche IT consulting company, whose managing director told Tribune Business yesterday that it was able to control revenue leakages and save firms money by supplementing their system checks.

Marlon Cooper, managing director of Symptai Consulting, said the Jamaican-based IT firm uses a product from CaseWare, and focuses on  IT auditing assurance services.

“What that means is that we go in  to organiaations, look at their business processes and look at their systems that support those processes,” Mr Cooper said.

“A lot of times there are a lot of misalignments. What we try to do is provide solutions  to ensure that you have a continuity plan in place in the event of a disaster.

“We are trying to strengthen how organisations operate. It may also be looking at a  specific application and  doing a review of the application to say whether or not it is doing what it is supposed to be doing. We go in and use data analysis tools to extract information, test it and ensure that the system is doing what it is supposed to do.”

Mr Cooper, who works in the Bahamas with forensic accountant John S Bain, made a presentation on the services at a two-hour workshop at the British Colonial Hilton.

“We are also information security consultants,” he added. “It’s a new business in terms of how the Caribbean has approached it. Technology is playing a huge role in how people go about their day-to-day lives. We will do the things that hackers will do without causing any damage.

“The core system that a company uses, we just build some additional checks in our system. This saves the company a lot of money because if they want to change their core systems, it’s a huge expenditure, but if they take our system and build these supplementary roles within our system to support what their system is doing then they have a  better way of controlling those revenue leakages,” Mr Cooper said.

“People generally try to get their IT consulting services from the PwC’s and KPMG’s, but we have been  a viable alternative for businesses. We come in to do the assessments; we also make recommendations for them if they need assistance for implementing the recommendations. Unlike the external auditors, who have independence issues, we don’t have those because we are not signing off on their financial statements.”

Nakeisha Simms, senior internal auditor at NIB, said the CaseWare product Symptai utilisies had helped NIB close some control gaps.

“We officially launched in 2010. We have been using it ever since. It’s been a great help, not only to internal audit but to the organisation as a whole. We have been able to sit down and close some control gaps. We have been able to sit down and look at some processes differently,” she said.

Mr Cooper said his firm also offers businesses a process assurance service that involves continuous monitoring.

“Now that we have come in and  accessed the business processes we can actually provide a solution that will continuously monitor the controls. If you have a system where you are paying a lot of money, you want to make sure that you’re not doing something two times or that someone is not doing something too fast,” he added.