Data Analytics for Automated Audit Procedures

The client is a large global professional services firm.

Challenge

The traditional audit approach for one of our clients involved extensive manual efforts such as manual inspection of documents (vouching), interviews with the client to obtain client transaction data, creating sampling of the transaction data and using traditional ways of analyzing the data using Excel. This kind of audit approach did not allow for standardization as it was governed by different teams (sampling methods used vary by region/country/partner/engagement team).The client wanted to update their traditional audit procedures to both eliminate extensive manual efforts that their team previously used and standardize audit procedures globally.

Solution

Orion developed an Audit Procedures application that was able to collect and report on large amounts of accounting data directly from a clients’ ERP system. The application expanded the existing framework to generate audit evidence and enabled auditors to leverage data analytics through state-of-the-art technology. 

Impact

The client was able to achieve:

• Increased efficiency through automation, specifically with their data collection methods 
• Increased effectiveness or their auditors to better understand client transactions 
• Automated generation of work papers