S P OT LI G H T
ADAPTING AT THE SPEED OF BUSINESS
INNOVATIONS IN DATA-DRIVEN AUDIT NG
Recent advancements in data analytics have fostered a host
of pioneering approaches to growth and performance in business.
Discover how continuous auditing (CA) and continuous monitoring
(CM) harness big data to help your business identify risks, reveal
trends, and expose operational glitches in real time.
S
ince the advent of the yearly internal
audit, accounting mistakes and oper-
ational miscalculations have traditionally
been discovered well after corrective
action or financial recovery are possible.
While audits are still necessary, emerging
strategies powered by data analytics
provide deeper business insights at the
click of a button.
Continuous auditing (CA) and continu-
ous monitoring (CM) are complementary
practices that expose risk and facilitate
decision-making based on data from
sources inside and outside your company.
While traditional audits illustrate the
overall health of your company based
on a sampling of data over a period of
time, CA and CM allow you to regularly
calibrate your operations based on real-
time performance metrics using a more
robust set of data. Organizations that
master these strategies are more agile,
more adaptive, and more likely to out
perform their competitors.
A Two-Fold Process
CA and CM, while both data-driven in
nature, are separate processes with
unique features. Continuous auditing is
managed outside of your organization
and automates the verification of data
and transactions as they happen. When
the system discovers a discrepancy or
error, it triggers an alert so that imme-
diate corrective action can be taken. In
contrast, continuous monitoring is an
internal management tool that evaluates
operations, employees, systems, and
processes to detect compliance and
efficiency.
While these processes do not necessar-
ily need to coexist, a two-fold approach
supports interactive decision-making
across divisions of the organization.
Some key capabilities of CA and CM are:
Î Î Simultaneously monitors millions of
data records and generates relevant
customized reports.
Î Î Increases oversight and improves risk
avoidance with constant monitoring
and automatic status updates.
Î Î Continuously expands application
to expose risks beyond accounting
transactions.
Î Î Shifts the auditing paradigm from
periodic reporting on a small data
sample to continuous reporting on
robust volumes of data.
Î Î Harvests data from previously
unavailable or unused sources inside
and outside the organization.
"
Continuous
auditing and
continuous
monitoring are
complementary
practices that
expose risk and
facilitate decision-
making based
on data from
sources inside
and outside
your company.”
RANKED ONE OF FORBES' BEST BANKS OF 2018 // CONNECT INNOVATION FALL 2018 // SNB.COM
15