Graduate Blog

Sarah – Consulting Dublin

Hi everyone,

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working off-site mainly developing the ‘to-be’ process maps for the future system our team is designing. We recently walked through these with the client and I updated the process maps during the workshops we held.

In addition to this, I participated in a stakeholder and communications workshop last month and over the following weeks I assisted in developing and finalising our stakeholder and communications plan which was sent to the client two weeks ago.

Apart from the project I am working on, I have also been doing some business development work where I have been developing new content for the People and Change side of the Consulting website. So, I’ve been kept really busy since I last wrote.

As I am finishing up for the Christmas tomorrow this will be my last blog until 2012! We have our Christmas party tomorrow night which I’m really looking forward to...I have heard there will be an awards ceremony and possibly karaoke so I’m sure it will be a great night!

Have a great Christmas and I’ll write again in the New Year!

Sarah

Catherine – Assurance South East

Hi all,

This will be my last blog before Christmas and before the hectic busy season of 2012 commences in work. I was on training the week before last for two days, as part of our contract we are continuously updated on area’s which we will be working on in the coming year. My exposure to the audit of funds is limited as our office does not really deal with them however it was really interesting to learn about some new area’s such as the pricing of funds and capital stocks.

After that I started on the interim audit of one of our offices largest manufacturing clients. I also worked on the audit of this client last year and again in August of this year for our interim controls testing. It’s nice to go back to see some familiar faces at the clients offices. I was there for a week in total and essentially we started our audit work by looking at the clients’ trial balance up to the end of November. This allows us to reduce the amount of work we will have to do in January as there is a very tight reporting deadline that we have to meet without group auditors in the United States. I was working on some new areas this year on the job as well such as looking at sales contracts in place with customers and intercompany transaction testing. I also had to explain to one of the new associates about some of the area’s that I has worked on last year and this is a really new thing for me to be passing on some of the knowledge I have learned since I started over 12 months ago to those who are now in the position I was in when I first started. It’s a really interesting aspect to the work as it really makes you think about the work when you have to explain to another person the reasons why you are doing the particular audit testing for example.

We have our regional Christmas party to look forward to now on Friday in Kilkenny. The three offices from the South East, Wexford, Waterford and Kilkenny will all be coming together for dinner and I’m sure what will be a great night catching up with everyone from the other offices!

Until next time I hope you all have a lovely Christmas...

Catherine