By Joel Sauve, Vice President of Audit and Solutions Operations
This is part one in a three-part series on how to successfully stand up a best practice error identification and prevention program for accelerating your audit workflow. In this first installment, let’s look at common misperceptions and gaps, as well as what is required to overcome them.
Adoption determines value
Most organizations don’t struggle with understanding prevention. They struggle with making it stick.
A prevention program is intended to help catch errors earlier, reduce manual rework, and improve margin integrity, but the gap between implementation and impact is where most programs stall. Not because technology falls short, but because an operational foundation isn’t ready to support it. Organizations that see the strongest results don’t rebuild everything at once. They focus on making the program easier to adopt, sustain, and trust over time. That’s where value begins.
Start with inconsistent, not broken
Prevention programs depend on consistency. When inputs vary, outcomes do too.
The goal is not to standardize everything, it’s to identify a small number of practices that create the most variability and bring them into alignment. For many organizations, this starts with something simple like identifying when data is uploaded, how frequently it’s updated, or which teams are responsible for maintaining it. Establishing predictable timing and ownership creates a stable baseline and once that baseline exists, the system can do its job more effectively.
Internal or external?
The first step is to determine whether to use your internal team or a partner like Cotiviti.
Using internal teams to review and resolve errors has several benefits. You can maximize team value by shifting effort from labor-intensive recovery activities to proactive error prevention and margin protection. You can develop faster resolution through streamlined workflows and faster collaboration between internal stakeholders and suppliers. And you have greater control of your financial processes by empowering internal teams to identify root causes, improve business processes, and prevent recurring errors.
Using an external partner like Cotiviti has its own benefits. You can overcome resource constraints with a dedicated team of audit specialists who act as an extension of your company. You gain proven expertise and disciplined execution with advanced issue resolution and potentially greater value capture. And you can focus on continuous improvement while Cotiviti helps prevent errors, enabling your team to strengthen processes, improve controls, and reduce recurring sources of financial leakage.
Speed over perfection
The faster data moves, the more value prevention delivers.
Delays don’t just slow down insights. They push errors further downstream, where they become harder to calculate and correct. Organizations that see early success in prevention align with IT from the start to harmonize data systems and integrations and ensure there are dedicated resources for data mapping and transfers. One best practice is to establish daily or weekly data transfers, clarify ownership of data delivery, and define expectations around timing and completeness. When data flows accurately and consistently, teams can act earlier and that leads to fewer issues that require manual intervention later.
Where prevention ends
Every prevention program has a cutoff point.
It’s a moment where errors can no longer be calculated by the system and must be handled manually or in a post-audit recovery review. Understanding where that point exists is critical because the closer teams operate to that boundary, the harder it becomes to prevent issues efficiently. Organizations that perform well identify this threshold early and adjust processes upstream, so issues are addressed while they are still easier to detect, calculate, and resolve.
Best practice alignments
Technology adoption is often a perception problem.
If stakeholders see prevention as just another system, adoption will lag. If they understand that prevention is a path to improving how work gets done, then adoption accelerates. That alignment needs to happen early. Finance, accounts payable, merchandising, and IT should all have a shared understanding of what the program is designed to solve, how it will change daily workflows, and what success looks like over time. Without that clarity, even the best tools struggle to gain traction.
Success beyond ROI
Return on investment matters, but it’s not enough to guide behavior.
Prevention programs are most effective when success is defined in operational terms, not just financial ones. That includes metrics like error reduction timing, adoption across teams, reduction in manual calculations, and improvements in data consistency. When teams understand what progress looks like day to day, they are more likely to engage with the program consistently.
Enablement from the start
Training is not a final step. It’s part of how adoption begins.
Organizations that embed training into implementation see faster uptake because users understand how the system supports their role and know how to act on alerts. Confidence is established early both internally and externally when buyers, vendors, and suppliers all play a role in how prevention performs.
Clarity reduces friction, and less friction means more consistent use.
Final thoughts
Prevention is something you operate, not something you install.
The difference between a program that delivers value and one that sits idle is rarely the technology, but rather, how the organization supports it. The best prevention programs are not defined by how quickly they are implemented. They are defined by how well they are integrated into daily operations.
The objective isn’t total transformation. It’s progress.
In part two of this series, we’ll dive deeper into a specific use case, its complexities, and how a prevention program improves business outcomes.
To learn more about how Cotiviti helps companies stand up or optimize prevention programs for our clients with SmartP2P Alerts™, read our fact sheet, reach out to your primary representative, or share your questions at answers@cotiviti.com.
About the author
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Joel Sauve is Vice President of Audit and Solutions Operations at Cotiviti, where he draws on more than 30 years of experience leading audit engagements and technology operations to guide global teams through complex, ever-changing business landscapes. He's passionate about driving value for clients, improving processes, and delivering insights that allow businesses to thrive. |
