Some organizations have heard of SAS 70, SSAE 16, and soon to be SSAE 18, but, don’t really know WHY they need to pay to have a bunch of auditors trounce through their company for a month or two during the year, especially right after their financial audit just finished.

The answer is simple: Many companies will not even think about using your company to perform services for them without a clean Type II Report in place.

Some benefits of having an SSAE 16 performed:

• Ability to perform outsourcing services for Public Companies.
  • If performing financially significant duties for a Public Company, they are required to use a SSAE 16 qualified provider as it is the only way to give investors assurance over controls that are not performed by the Company in question.
• Public and Private companies are more likely to trust your organization with their data.
  • If you were to trust a company with your data, you would want complete assurance it will be handled with the utmost care
• A year round accessible knowledge source (your auditors).
  • As a service organization, large or small, you will always have questions regarding your business and having a set of auditors in place with access to a wide array of business knowledge, it will allow you to bounce your questions and concerns off of a group of trusted individuals.
• A third party to review your controls and activities to ensure they are functioning appropriately, and give advice on how to improve upon them.
  • Sometimes your internal audit department is good, but, not always as stringent as they should be. This will help to serve as a check on their work, as well as your staff. Additionally, if there were any findings noted, your auditors are in a great position to give you some tricks and tips to improve to ensure everything functions well the following period.
• Improving performance of the organization.
  • Just the knowledge that a review is being performed of an employee’s work that can have far reaching consequences for the company as a whole. No more, “Oh, I didn’t realize that reviewing user access was THAT important to do this month, sorry”, now, everyone knows that if it’s not done, the success or failure of the organization could rest upon them.
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Think of the SSAE 16 or SSAE-18 audit as an annual investment into your company, increasing potential new clients, productivity and accountability.