Most fraud isn't discovered through a dramatic tip-off. It's found — or missed — inside five ordinary business processes that every organization runs every single day: Order-to-Cash, Procure-to-Pay, Inventory Management, Accounts Receivable, and Treasury Management.
Across our engagements, we've consistently seen that roughly 90% of corporate fraud cases occur within these exact operational areas. That's not a coincidence — it's because these are the processes where money, goods, and approvals actually move, and where a small gap in control compounds quietly over time.
Where the gaps usually hide
In our experience, weaknesses tend to cluster around a few recurring patterns:
- Approval steps that exist on paper but aren't enforced in practice
- Reconciliations that happen monthly instead of daily, giving variances time to accumulate
- Single individuals holding both custody and recording responsibilities for the same transaction
- Dashboards that report totals, but never flag the one transaction that doesn't fit the pattern
A short self-check
Before commissioning a full review, most finance leaders can get a useful first read by asking: can we see, today, exactly who approved the last five unusual transactions in each of these five processes — and how long it took to notice them?
If that answer takes more than a few minutes to produce, that's usually the first sign of where a control review should start.
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