Enter strategic partnerships with confidence when utilizing proactive assurance

When it comes to executing a merger or successfully implementing a new system, real estate organizations face inherit risk. Traditionally, internal audit comes in reactively, focusing on the past and assessing what went wrong. Instead, the future of internal audit includes looking at how to secure a successful outcome from the get-go with proactive assurance. The Real Deal sat down with Baker Tilly national real estate practice leader, Mike Kamienski, and risk advisory professionals, Ben Quigley and Kelsey Renner, to discuss how adding Baker Tilly to your team can help your next major business change succeed and appear attractive to potential new partners.

Hire an ally

Internal audits can have a negative connotation. Historically, internal audit presents stakeholders with what went wrong rather than helping organizations do it right in the first place. With proactive assurance, risk advisory specialists are working with you from the beginning. These engagements give organizations an opportunity to utilize forward-looking techniques to ensure a successful implementation of change. One way Baker Tilly’s proactive assurance engagement helps an organization is by bringing in experienced specialists who know what a successful example of this change looks like, leveraging knowledge to plan out a specific action plan based on triumphs in the past.

The proactive assurance process not only aims to avoid pitfalls, but also helps organizations react to any issues that appear during the process of change, while keeping the execution process on track. With any organizational change, risk is likely to happen. When you have experienced allies anticipating the risk and following through in real-time, real estate organizations can remain assured that success is around the corner.

Proactive assurance in motion

Proactive assurance is broken down into three phases: pre-implementation, in-flight reviews and post-implementation review.

The pre-implementation phase begins when someone in an organization has an idea for a change, whether that’s creating a new process or joining a new partnership. Real estate investors have shifted to using third parties when entering a joint venture or bringing on a third property manager.

In-flight reviews are when the Baker Tilly team is brought on board and asks questions ahead of time to create a plan of execution based on successful examples from their prior expertise. The team will then identify five or six biggest risks throughout the process of change and will efficiently check-in during the change implantation to evaluate those risk factors. If a check-in reveals a potential problem, the risk advisory specialists provide real-time insight to correct the issue, preventing further breakdown and maintaining the change while in motion.

The third phase, post-implementation review, is quick and easy, as the internal audit review was conducted in real-time. Organizations at this point have successfully completed the change and because of proactive assurance, not much else needs to be done.

The significance of proactive assurance

Engaging in proactive assurance is an attractive selling point when marketing your organization to potential business partners. Any new partner will have the confidence and trust that they’re going into business with an organization that will anticipate and react to problems before they occur.

Read the full article on The Real Deal to learn more about proactive assurance and how Baker Tilly can be added to your plan for success.