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Practice Areas · The Universe of Work

Five disciplines.
One operating standard.

Every mandate RKLCMA accepts falls within one of five practice areas. Together they cover the firm’s complete universe of work — from risk-based assurance through to end-to-end ERP process management. Each engagement is led personally by the partner accountable for the work.

01
Risk-Based Audit & Assurance
02
Cost Optimisation & Business Process Management
03
IT & Technology Audit
04
Tax, Legal & Regulatory
05
ERP Process Management

Practice Area 01

Risk-Based Audit & Assurance.

Independent, risk-prioritised audit and assurance work — covering internal audit, control effectiveness testing, forensic and anti-bribery reviews, and audit-committee advisory — conducted to global professional standards and Indian statutory requirements.

Service Lines

  • Statutory internal audit under Section 138 of the Companies Act 2013 — scoped and executed to the IIA’s 2024 Global Internal Audit Standards
  • ICFR (Internal Financial Controls) effectiveness testing under Section 143(3)(i) and the ICAI Guidance Note — design and operating-effectiveness layers
  • Anti-bribery and anti-corruption reviews — the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 for India operations, alongside FCPA / UK Bribery Act exposure for foreign-parent subsidiaries
  • Forensic investigations under ACFE methodology — vendor fraud, procurement integrity, asset misappropriation, conflict-of-interest, with CARO 2020 Clause 11 and Form ADT-4 implications addressed
  • Co-source internal audit for the Indian subsidiaries of multinational groups — reporting in the parent’s framework language while meeting Indian statutory requirements
  • Internal audit applicability assessment — Section 138 read with Rule 13 thresholds, and audit-committee constitution under Section 177
  • External Quality Assessment (EQA) support for in-house audit functions building toward 2024 Standards conformance

Methodology Anchors

  • Companies Act 2013 — Sections 138 (internal audit), 177 (audit committee), 134(5)(e) (directors’ responsibility), 143(3)(i) (ICFR)
  • CARO 2020 (Clauses 11, 13, 21) and the ICAI Guidance Note on Audit of Internal Financial Controls
  • Prevention of Corruption Act 1988; SEBI LODR for listed entities
  • Where an engagement warrants, informed by the IIA Global Internal Audit Standards 2024, COSO Internal Control & ERM, and the ACFE Fraud Tree — frameworks the partner is certified in (CIA, CFE)

Credential Signal

This practice carries the combined weight of Randhir’s CIA (IIA, USA, 2009) and CFE (ACFE, USA, 2011) credentials, alongside his prior role as Group Internal Auditor at ABB Limited — the Swiss-Swedish power and automation group — covering North & South Asia, India, the Middle East, and Africa. Engagements span risk-based audit, FCPA reviews, and SOX / ICFR control effectiveness across multiple geographies.

Engagement Evidence

  • ABB Limited (Randhir’s prior role) — Group Internal Audit covering North & South Asia, India, the Middle East, and Africa, across power and automation manufacturing operations. Risk-based audits, FCPA reviews, SOX and ICFR programmes. The methodology developed across that tenure is the operating standard the firm applies to its multinational mandates today
  • An Indian subsidiary of a global multinational group — process and SOP work with embedded control design, conducted to the standards expected by the global head office
  • An Indian design and lifestyle business — organisation-wide policies and procedures with control-design embedded
  • A listed consumer-facing group — organisation-wide physical verification of fixed assets, paired with GST compliance scope under area 4
  • A large listed retail group — control testing within a broader process management engagement

Practice Area 02

Cost Optimisation & Business Process Management.

Systematic identification and quantification of recoverable margin — and the redesign of the business processes that produce it. Using activity-based costing, vendor-spend analysis, and process re-engineering, with each finding quantified in financial terms and accompanied by a specific, implementable recommendation. Cost reduction and process redesign are treated as a single discipline, because durable cost outcomes come from better processes, not one-time cuts.

Service Lines

  • Cost-optimisation diagnostic — 4-to-6 week engagement producing a quantified, prioritised list of recoverable margin
  • Activity-Based Costing (ABC) implementation — reconstruction of actual cost flows by function, product, channel, or process
  • Vendor spend analysis — Pareto concentration analysis, top-tier vendor due diligence, MSA / SLA / OLA review, TCO-based renegotiation
  • Procurement cost benchmarking against comparable industry references
  • Working capital diagnostics — receivables aging, payables management, inventory turnover, trapped working capital
  • Project margin analysis for project-based businesses
  • Cost records and cost audit support under Section 148 of the Companies Act 2013 and the Companies (Cost Records and Audit) Rules 2014 — for regulated and specified industries
  • Business process re-engineering — mapping current-state processes, removing waste and duplication, and redesigning for cost, cycle-time, and control
  • Operating model redesign — centralisation, standardisation, manpower right-sizing, SOP discipline
  • Process documentation and workflow design — authority matrices, policies, and SOP manuals that lock in the redesigned process

Methodology Anchors

  • ICAI Cost Accounting Standards (CAS-1 to CAS-24) and GACAP
  • Section 148 and the Companies (Cost Records and Audit) Rules 2014
  • Activity-Based Costing, Pareto concentration analysis, and TCO-based contracting as working techniques
  • Lean / process re-engineering principles, applied where relevant

Credential Signal

Randhir’s primary credential as a Cost and Management Accountant (CMA, ICAI, 1996), and the firm’s registration under the Cost and Works Accountants Act, 1959 (Firm Reg. No. 003299, ICAI), anchor this practice. The firm operates this work as its founding discipline.

Representative Engagement

IT Cost Optimisation — a large listed consumer-facing group

A focused multi-week diagnostic, timed to the contract-renewal cycle

A focused IT cost optimisation review of the group’s technology spend across a large and concentrated vendor base. The methodology combined Pareto vendor concentration analysis, cost-element decomposition across capital and operating heads covering the substantial majority of IT spend, on-site due-diligence with the highest-spend vendors, and a review of MSA / SLA / OLA contracting practices.

The engagement delivered a structured roadmap across several workstreams — formalising IT processes and documentation, vendor due-diligence and contracting, cost-driver-based Total Cost of Ownership negotiation, a cost optimisation team with a weekly review cadence, SLA / OLA-based IT resource performance management, and elimination of tool and process redundancies. Each capital and operating cost element was tabled with a recommended action: continue, reduce, eliminate, or change.

Further Engagement Evidence

  • A large listed consumer-facing group — operating-model redesign of a site-level function into a centralised, standardised process with automated outputs and a clear escalation matrix, materially reducing manpower and turn-around time
  • An Indian design and lifestyle business — process and cost optimisation work
  • An Indian subsidiary of a global multinational group — cost and process review

Practice Area 03

IT & Technology Audit.

Review and governance of technology cost structures, ERP control environments, software licence portfolios, IT general controls, and AI-and-automation pipelines — conducted with combined CISA-led financial audit perspective and CIO-level operational depth.

Service Lines

  • IT cost optimisation — software licence utilisation, cloud infrastructure cost governance, SaaS portfolio review, IT vendor contract benchmarking
  • IT General Controls (ITGC) audit — access management, change management, computer operations, system development — aligned to the ICAI’s ITGC expectations for ICFR
  • Audit trail / edit log compliance review — the mandatory accounting-software audit-trail requirement under the Companies (Accounts) Rules and its CARO 2020 reporting dimension
  • ERP control review — segregation of duties, authorisation matrix, master-data controls, journal-entry controls, interface controls (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Tally, mixed-ERP)
  • Data protection and IT governance review — readiness against the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023
  • AI and process automation advisory — assessment of where AI can structurally reduce operational cost, with implementable roadmaps
  • Digital operations and commercial technology review

Methodology Anchors

  • Companies (Accounts) Rules — mandatory audit trail (edit log) for accounting software
  • Companies Act 2013 Section 143(3)(i); CARO 2020 Clause 3(xxi)
  • Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023; SEBI LODR IT-governance expectations for listed entities
  • The ICAI’s ITGC expectations for ICFR testing
  • Engagements led by a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), applying IT-audit and ITGC discipline to the Indian ICFR context

Credential Signal

Randhir’s CISA credential (ISACA, USA, 2010), combined with Technology Advisory Partner Rajat Tyagi’s MBA (IIM Lucknow, 1996–1998), B.Tech (Delhi College of Engineering), and senior technology roles including Chief Information & Digital Officer at PVR INOX Limited, VP & Global Head of Architecture at Bharti Airtel, VP & COO at JP Morgan (Treasury & Securities Services), Principal Consultant at Infosys, plus roles at Bennett Coleman, Standard Chartered, ANZ, and Citibank. A CISA-trained partner alongside a partner who has held CIO-level technology budget authority is genuinely uncommon in Indian advisory practice.

Engagement Evidence

  • A large listed consumer-facing group — IT cost optimisation (cross-referenced from Practice Area 02)
  • Earlier (Rajat’s CIO tenure) — direct technology budget authority across cloud infrastructure, software licence portfolios, ERP operational costs, and IT vendor contracts at a large multi-location listed group
  • Earlier (Rajat’s prior roles) — Airtel Money wallet technology across India and Africa; Treasury & Securities Services COO at JP Morgan; CxO Strategy Principal at Infosys

Practice Area 05

ERP Process Management.

End-to-end ownership and execution of ERP-anchored finance and operations processes — covering process design, SOP documentation, data migration, user training, and steady-state process ownership across procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, master-data, and finance-close cycles — primarily in SAP environments but extending across ERP platforms.

Service Lines

  • SAP / ERP data migration — master data design (vendor / material / customer / chart of accounts), cutover support, post-go-live handholding
  • Procure-to-Pay process management — full P2P cycle ownership through the “procure-to-just-before-pay” boundary, with TDS / TCS deduction logic and GST input eligibility built into the workflow
  • Order-to-Cash process management — customer onboarding, GST e-invoicing / IRN generation, invoicing, collection follow-up, dispute resolution, reconciliation
  • Reconciliation and close support — bank, GL, intercompany matching, monthly close
  • SOP development for ERP-anchored processes — written against actual ERP configuration, not generic process maps
  • User Acceptance Testing (UAT) coordination for ERP implementations, upgrades, and module rollouts
  • Vendor reconciliation — across SAP and Tally ledgers, with audit-grade reporting (SHA-256 audit trail, Excel and PDF outputs)
  • Process training for finance and operations teams
  • GST reconciliation at scale — GSTR-2B-to-purchase-register matching and Section 16 ITC eligibility, via the firm’s proprietary reconciliation infrastructure integrated with SAP, Tally, and the GST portal

Methodology Anchors

  • CGST Act 2017 — Section 16 ITC conditions, Rule 36(4), GSTR-2B / IMS, e-invoicing rules
  • TDS / TCS provisions of the Income Tax Act; the ICAI Guidance Note on Audit of Internal Financial Controls
  • Companies (Accounts) Rules audit-trail requirement for accounting software
  • SAP standard process methodology (P2P, O2C, R2R) and COSO control principles, as working method

Credential Signal

Randhir’s CMA + CISA combination provides the financial-control plus IT-systems perspective. Rajat’s CIO-level operational ERP experience (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Salesforce) provides the architectural depth. The firm operates proprietary reconciliation infrastructure for GST 2B-to-purchase-register reconciliation and for vendor-ledger reconciliation across mixed-ERP environments — purpose-built for the Indian multi-state, multi-ERP reality.

Representative Engagement

Multi-stream SAP Process Management — a large listed retail group

End-to-end ownership across multiple business divisions

End-to-end ownership of the SAP-anchored procure-to-just-before-pay cycle across several business divisions, including:

  • Vendor reconciliation across the ledger — surfacing unmatched debits, double-payments, and stale credits, with recovery of working capital
  • SAP data migration coordination
  • UAT coordination for the new ERP rollout
  • SOP writing for finance and operations teams
  • Process training to support post-go-live operations

The “procure-to-just-before-pay” boundary is a deliberate design choice — the firm owns the upstream process discipline (vendor onboarding, invoice processing, reconciliation, approval workflow), while the client retains the final payment-release decision. This preserves segregation of duties at the highest-risk point in the P2P cycle while delivering the cycle-time, cost, and control benefits of partner-led process management.

Representative Engagement

Pan-India SAP Data Migration — a listed real estate developer

Multi-month engagement · Multiple project locations · MM & PS modules

End-to-end SAP data migration for the Materials Management and Project Systems modules across multiple India project locations, with project-team training and post-go-live handholding. The discipline of in-house knowledge transfer through structured training materially reduces extended-consulting fees, and clean MM & PS data on day one prevents the cost of the post-migration data clean-up sprints that typically follow large ERP rollouts. Engagement was delivered to the standards expected by the audit committee of a listed group.

Further Engagement Evidence

  • A large listed consumer-facing group — end-to-end SAP data migration including AP and vendor / material master data creation, with SOPs covering Finance & Accounts and IT. Clean master data eliminates duplicate vendor payments and mis-postings; documented SOPs lock in process discipline post go-live
  • An Indian design and lifestyle business — organisation-wide policies and procedures
  • An Indian subsidiary of a global multinational group — SOP and process work

Three phases. Defined deliverables.
No surprises at the end.

The firm operates a consistent three-phase engagement pattern, refined over many mandates and codified into the firm’s methodology. The pattern is adapted to each engagement’s scope, but the discipline is constant.

01

Scoping & Discovery

Structured walkthroughs and discussions across the in-scope functions. Risk areas and exposure points identified and ranked. A formal scope document agreed before any substantive fieldwork begins.

No substantive fieldwork commences before scope is formally agreed with management.

02

Fieldwork & Analysis

Process mapping (current state), control testing, financial impact quantification. Reference benchmarks from well-governed comparable organisations applied as an objective basis for gap identification, not as prescriptive targets.

An interim findings memo is issued at the mid-point. No findings are presented for the first time in the final report.

03

Reporting & Management Response

Each finding follows a consistent structure: observation, root cause, financial impact estimate, priority rating (High / Medium / Low), recommendation. Findings discussed with the relevant process owner; management responses incorporated; final board-ready report issued with implementation tracker.

Implementation tracker includes named owners and agreed timelines.

A thirty-minute conversation, with the partner.

If your problem is one we can move the needle on, you will know by the end of the call. If it is not, that will be communicated as well — with a thoughtful view on who could.

Message Randhir on WhatsApp →
Direct to the partner · randhir.lal@rklcma.com · +91 95609 68938