The Strategic Partnership of the ARC Institute and CGS
A Turning Point for Internal Audit
The collaboration between CGS GmbH and the ARC Institute marks a turning point for Internal Audit: it unites proven audit software with highly specialized artificial intelligence.
In this partnership, CGS GmbH contributes its deep IT expertise and its established web-based audit management solution RIAS, which serves as the single point of truth for transparent, reliable audit data. As a thought leader, the ARC Institute contributes its comprehensive AI audit transformation know-how and methodological expertise to lift audit processes to a new technological level.
RIAS Assist: AI Power Without Breaking Points
The result of this collaboration is RIAS Assist, a fully integrated AI solution built directly into the RIAS software. The goal
is to close the agentic gap and radically simplify day-to-day audit work – with no media discontinuities and no tedious copy-and-paste between your audit software and external AI services.
In short, combining the RIAS platform with the AI expertise of the ARC Institute delivers a turnkey solution that does more than make Internal Audit more efficient: it positions the function as a strategic navigator within the organization.
See RIAS Live
Contact us for more information on RIAS and on running an audit management system in your Internal Audit function. In an individual session we will present the software and give you a clear picture of how it supports the different areas of your audit work.
RIAS Assist – The Integrated Solution
- Seamless workflow: RIAS Assist applies state-of-the-art generative AI (GenAI) to produce professional drafts for audit programs, findings, or corrective actions at the push of a button – right inside the auditor's familiar working environment.
- Methodological rigor: Because the ARC Human-Centric AI Audit Approach is built in, the auditor always remains the director and final decision maker. AI acts as a high-performance digital workforce that intelligently automates up to 80 % of operational sub-steps, such as documentation and formatting, while full control and accountability stay with the human auditor.
- Productivity and quality: Combining the CGS IT framework with the audit methodology know-how of the ARC Institute enables productivity gains of up to 30 %. At the same time, centrally defined master prompts secure a consistent quality standard across the entire team.
- Maximum security and flexibility: RIAS Assist gives you full control over data sovereignty. Organizations can configure the large language model (LLM) of their choice – for example via Azure, AWS, or locally hosted – to meet specific compliance and data protection requirements.
A New Standard for Internal Audit
This partnership enables audit teams to unlock the full potential of agentic AI and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Auditors can engage in a direct dialogue with their data, while the software works in the background to ensure alignment with the Global Internal Audit Standards (IIA) and your internal audit manual.
ARC Audit Methodology Know-How
RIAS Assist combines the CGS IT framework with the methodology of the ARC Institute – putting generative AI to work directly in the auditor's familiar environment.
The ARC Institute at a Glance
Today, the ARC Institute delivers more than 3,900 training days per year worldwide in English, German, French, and Spanish – among others in cooperation with numerous national IIA associations.
Participants earn official CPE certificates to evidence their professional qualification. A particular focus lies on integrating AI technologies to make audit processes more efficient and future-ready. In addition, the ARC Institute delivers tailored in-house training for Internal Audit teams. For more than 20 years, it has hosted its flagship conference series, the Audit Challenge Conference Series.
The ARC Institute
The ARC Institute offers a specialized portfolio of professional education and advisory services for Internal Audit. It spans a wide range of formats, from video-based learning and interactive gamification training to live seminars on topics such as digital transformation and artificial intelligence.
The ARC Institute in Numbers
Our goal is your transformation: we make your audit function boardroom-ready and secure your decisive edge in a decade of change.
RIAS Audit Management
RIAS enables risk-based annual and multi-year audit planning and provides a clear view of current and completed audit activities. Consistent documentation of audit programs, audit procedures, and audit reports streamlines your processes, as does the structured management and tracking of actions in the follow-up process.
Auditors can focus on their core work instead of wrestling with complex spreadsheets or formatting Word templates. As an integrated system, the application not only supports data protection requirements more reliably, it also creates tangible synergies throughout fieldwork.
As a web solution, RIAS can be run on premise or as SaaS. It works in any browser and requires no installation on the user's device. Auditors can therefore log in to RIAS anytime and anywhere, as long as they have access to the corporate network.
Raise Efficiency – Improve Quality
RIAS raises the efficiency of your Internal Audit function and noticeably improves quality. Our web-based audit management solution supports Internal Audit in its daily work and serves as a transparent, fully traceable data foundation – your single point of truth.
Benefits for Your Internal Audit Function
- Central management: RIAS supports you across every aspect of Internal Audit, from risk identification and risk analysis through to management reporting. The result is central audit management – system-supported, integrated, and free of system breaks.
- Greater efficiency: Improved transparency and clarity strengthen resource planning and enable the efficient deployment of your team. Intuitive multi-year planning proves just as valuable as the capacity planning module.
- Compliance with required standards: RIAS is aligned with the standards of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and the German Institute for Internal Auditing (DIIR) and supports compliance with the required standards.
- Transparency and traceability: Structured documentation of every process step, including history and versioning, makes the work of Internal Audit transparent and fully traceable. Extensive reporting and search functions let you export key information easily and drop it straight into board presentations. These are particularly valuable advantages in Internal Audit quality assessments.
- Single point of truth: All relevant information is stored in one integrated system. That avoids content scattered across spreadsheets, Access databases, and similar tools. You work from a consistent information base – a single point of truth.
- Web-based solution: RIAS is a web-based solution and can be centrally managed and configured by your administrators. No local installation and no roll-out are required.
- Standardization and quality assurance: Standardized processes and consistent templates, such as report templates, demonstrably raise the quality of audit work and deliver uniform, standardized results.
- Flexible administration: RIAS adapts easily to your processes and structures, whether you are a mid sized company, a public authority, or a group audit function. Audit types, report types, action classifications, rating scales, and templates can all be configured to your needs, along with many other elements. You do not adapt to the software – you get an audit solution tailored to you.
End-to-End Support
RIAS supports you across every aspect of Internal Audit, from risk identification and risk analysis through to management reporting.
Managing Internal Audit Professionally
Audit Universe
The audit universe is your control center for risk management in RIAS. It displays every auditable unit with its risk score, color coded for immediate clarity. The matrix is built from your organizational structure and your processes. Click any auditable unit to go straight to its details.
Making Fieldwork Easier
From the task inbox and the audit program through to the follow-up process.
- Transparent audits: RIAS provides an immediate overview of each audit. The audit details, including the progress bar, show exactly which phase the audit has reached. Information on milestones achieved, timelines, and the clear documentation of the audit and its procedures give you a complete picture at a glance.
- Audit planning: Thorough preparation is indispensable under today's conditions. RIAS supports this with detailed audit planning, including the upfront design of the audit program structure.
- Audit program: The audit program guides you through the engagement and lets you document each audit step as you go. Here you describe audit objects and circumstances and record findings and recommendations. Supporting documents can be attached or linked directly.
- Templates and qualified documentation: RIAS offers a range of templates to avoid repetitive work and secure consistent, high-quality documentation. Templates range from audit program templates to report templates, and users can adapt them to the specifics of an engagement at any time.
- Action tracking (follow-up process): Actions are not only easy to record – their implementation can also be tracked in a targeted way. Extensive search and filter options keep implementation in view, as do the corresponding reports.
- Communication with the business: At key points you can communicate with the business directly through RIAS. For example, the business can document its statement on the implementation status of an action via an external link into RIAS.
- Report generation: Report templates let you generate audit reports straight out of RIAS. The result is standardized reports of consistently high quality.
Every Task in View
The RIAS task inbox gives every user a single place to see their workload. All relevant tasks, messages, and information appear there directly. One click takes the user straight to the corresponding screen, ready to start work.
The modules of the audit management solution in overview.
RIAS Features at a Glance
- Task inbox: The task inbox is the central entry point and control center for users. After logging in to RIAS, all relevant tasks and notifications appear immediately. One click on a task leads straight to the corresponding screen.
- Risk management: Risk management covers two core themes: risk identification and the audit universe – from submitted audit requests through risk inventories to risk assessment. Everything is visualized in a clear audit universe.
- Audit program: Annual and multi-year planning is based on the auditable units captured in the audit universe. Starting from the responsibility of each process owner, audits are planned and defined individually. Audit cycles and overall risk scores can be taken into account.
- Fieldwork execution: Clear detailed audit planning combined with a flexible audit program enables efficient fieldwork. Integrated capacity planning lets you steer the deployment of resources efficiently. All captured information can be transferred automatically into consistent reports based on stored report templates.
- Follow-up process: Actions arising from audits can be tracked clearly in RIAS. Responsible users are automatically alerted to follow-ups that are due or still outstanding.
- Reporting and dashboard: The reporting module lets you create a wide range of overviews and reports, which can then be exported in various formats. In the RIAS dashboard, simple filter criteria give you a range of analyses in clear charts.
- Knowledge base: The knowledge base is a central information hub for important information, policies, and documents. It is frequently used to host the internal audit manual.
- Administration: A comprehensive administration area enables a precise fit to your requirements. Many functions can be configured to your organization, and access can be steered individually through a detailed role and permission concept.
- Auditee portal (optional): The auditee portal supports communication with the audited business units. It enables efficient, fully traceable coordination during and after the audit – from requesting documents in preparation, through joint report alignment, to transparent tracking of actions.
RIAS Assist – Integrated AI Support
Intelligent auditing – AI-powered, securely integrated into RIAS.
- Simple to use – just one click: No AI skills required. With RIAS Assist, producing high-quality drafts takes a single click. The system uses centrally administered prompts to create relevant content instantly – you simply select the best draft and continue with your work.
- Draft generation with generative AI: RIAS Assist generates drafts directly in RIAS at the push of a button. It produces audit program proposals, for example, and turns simple notes or bullet points into professional write ups such as findings, actions, and more.
- Time savings: RIAS Assist does not aim for perfection – it aims for speed. It produces the first draft, which turns you from author into reviewer. Instead of starting from a blank page, you refine and finalize. That saves substantial time, because the first steps are often the hardest.
- Quality standards through central prompts: Personal styles in audit documentation can vary widely – but with RIAS Assist your whole team starts from the same high standard. Because prompts are defined centrally, every draft is created with consistent structure, tone, and quality.
- No vendor lock-in: With RIAS Assist you are not tied to a particular LLM such as OpenAI GPT – you simply configure the model of your choice. Today you can configure any model available on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, as well as local, self-hosted LLMs.
- Compliance: RIAS Assist was designed with flexibility and data protection in mind. You select the large language model (LLM) that meets your organization's legal and data privacy requirements. Whether on premise or in a secure cloud environment, compliance remains entirely under your control.
RIAS ARC AI Audit Workflow Software
With RIAS Assist, Internal Audit extends its RIAS environment with modern AI capabilities without giving up familiar processes or security standards. The module uses your organization's existing LLM infrastructure – for example Azure OpenAI or Amazon Bedrock – and supports auditors in drafting audit programs, describing circumstances, and formulating text.
ARC Institute – Where Audit Intelligence meets Innovation.
See RIAS Live
Client-Focused and Innovative
Our agile development processes let us pick up innovations and client feedback quickly and put them into practice. RIAS is continuously enhanced – close to our clients and consistently innovative.
We advise and support you from preparation through implementation to the operation and maintenance of your RIAS system.