3 essential internal audit analytics considerations
If you’re starting to outline your internal audit transformation strategy, there are three considerations that lay the groundwork for success—and we’re breaking them down.
1. Complete testing of all key financial areas
Recommended approach
- Replace key risk assessment and testing procedures with comprehensive analytics over the entire population
- Enable analytic assessments and tests to expand and refine over time, as the program matures
- Leverage modern low or no-code technologies to assess and analyze data sets much larger than legacy approaches in Excel
- Dial up or down investigative testing with risk ranking parameters
Benefits
- Exposes potential risk drivers that would be left otherwise unexposed, and eliminates the need for manual review of a small percentage sample
- Ability to customize and enhance tests over time with keyword identification and prior fraud patterns
- Ability to assess and analyze risk and controls at a much more granular level, even when data sets contain millions of rows
- Enables the analytic framework to inform and refine itself for more relevant and current results
2. Lean on executive dashboards for clear insights and action items
Recommended approach
- Enable executives to view status and results at the level of summarization that is most relevant and impactful
- Use the mobile-enabled features of modern analytic tools
- Harness the enhanced connectivity of tools like Power BI, which can be easily embedded into the Microsoft suite (including directly into PowerPoint, Teams, etc.!)
Benefits
- Busy executives receive a more appropriate summary, where each dashboard is designed to answer one top priority question
- Executives can receive the same level of insight, even during peak travel periods
- From executive board presentations to daily activity monitoring, embedded analytics increase the quality of reporting and adoption by end users
3. Automating SOx processes with ETL technology
Recommended approach
- Enable direct connections to source systems and databases
- Leverage notification workflows for more immediate stakeholder notification and response
- Utilize modern analytic tools to drive risk assessment and testing efficiencies
Benefits
- Eliminates the need for analysts to manually query, format, and share data
- Exceptions can be found within the month and quarter, instead of days or weeks following period close
- Interim assessment and testing become much more viable, reducing quarter and year-end burden
Ready for more? Explore the 5 internal audit KPIs you should be tracking.