Beth A. McKenney

Beth McKenney is a Principal in KPMG’s Technology Risk Management practice in the Detroit, MI office. Beth is an effective leader with over 17 years of experience helping clients manage risk, deliver value through IT internal audit, and strengthen their governance capabilities. Beth’s primary industry focus is industrial manufacturing. Beth is engaged nationally with KPMG’s industrial manufacturing leaders to advise clients on managing the emerging technology risk.

IT Internal Audit and Attest

•  Beth is a key member of the KPMG’s IT Internal Audit service line. Beth assists her clients manage and mitigate risk and drive more value to the organization through the IT internal audit reviews.  She has assisted clients in the management of internal audit departments including establishing department policies and procedures, metric reporting, Risk Assessment, and Audit Plan development.
• Beth has led numerous long-term IT Internal Audit (IT IA) client relationships for global automotive manufacturers, automotive suppliers, and captive automotive finance organizations.  She has led initiatives to improve methodologies and incorporate new regulatory and emerging technology risk requirements to ensure continuous improvement.
• Beth leads a number of large size Sarbanes-Oxley IT audit engagements working closely with client leadership and client’s external SOX advisors.  She is responsible for the overall engagements including General IT (GITC) and application control testing, international coordination, reliance approach, PMO activities including resource management, and budgeting. Areas of concentration include privileged access security, user provisioning, program change, and operations spanning Mainframe, AS/400, and Unix/Linux-based applications, along with popular packages such as SAP, Oracle, Hyperion, PeopleSoft, QAD, and JD Edwards.

IT Governance Advisory

• Beth has delivered value driven services helping clients with risk identification and mitigation and governance relating to people, process, and technology.  Beth has led a number of IT governance projects and assessed process maturity of the following critical IT domains leveraging frameworks like Cobit: IT Strategy, IT Architecture Oversight, IT Structure, Project Management, Change Management, Service Level Management, Internal Control Monitoring, IT Performance Metrics, Security, Risk, and Regulatory Management.

System Implementation Advisory and Controls Integration

• As Beth’s clients have embarked on strategic technology changes, Beth has engaged with clients to evaluate large system implementations on a real time basis.  Beth has provided actionable recommendations to her clients to ensure they manage projects successfully, mitigate risks timely, meet business requirements, and ultimately achieve the value from their technology investments.
• Within large technology implementations, Beth has led the controls and security work streams to ensure that key internal controls are implemented within the system and optimized leveraging new technology.  Key areas of focus include: assessment of business process flows and functional requirement documents to draft risk and control matrices for future state business processes around Procure to Pay, Order to Cash, Build to Retire, Plan to Build, Record to Report, and System Security. Beth has provided training and guidance around segregation of duties, access governance considerations, implementation testing strategies, and data conversion requirements in preparation for project launch.

Finance Transformation and Accounting Conversion Advisory

• Beth has helped clients manage their finance and accounting transformations.  Beth managed a global implementation of IFRS at a captive auto finance company. She managed a global team and ensured the consistent application of IFRS policies.  She performed the gap analysis from US GAAP. She assisted implemented process modifications, identified and managed system and process modifications, developed project and detailed work plans, and developed metric reporting to executive management. 

Thought Leadership and Speaking Engagements

• Beth has presented at professional conferences and summits including ISACA, Chief Audit Executive Forums, Executive Peer Exchanges, and a variety of client specific events.  She has also delivered internal and external training courses on a variety of topics related to IT governance and system implementation governance. 

Technical skills

• Data Analytics: IDEA, Alteryx, MS Excel, MS Access
• OS and DB environments: Windows, Unix, IBM z/OS, AS400, Oracle, SQL
• Applications: SAP, Oracle, QAD, JDE, Hyperion, PeopleSoft
• Other Applications: MS Office, MS Project, MS Visio