Auditors see increased demand for data analytics

Internal audit departments are increasingly relying on data analytics technology and hiring more people who have sophisticated data analysis skills, according to a new survey.

The survey, by the consulting firm Protiviti, polled more than 900 internal audit professionals and found that 73 percent of those whose organizations perform analytics said demand for data analytics has increased, especially among organizations using so-called “best practices.”

“At a high level what we’re seeing matches and mirrors what we’re hearing in the business community in this day and age, that people desire an increase in digitalization and robotics,” said Brian Christensen, executive vice president of global internal audit and financial advisory at Protiviti. “But clearly within the audit space, the use of data analytics is considered the best practice of today and the future, so audit professionals in our survey indicated they clearly acknowledged that. In many situations they’re still at the early stages of adopting and implementing these types of tools to better their audit process.”

Technology-oriented internal audit and accounting standards ranked as the top area for improvement cited by the survey respondents. Data quality is also an issue for many internal auditors using data analytics, with only 22 percent of the survey respondents rating data quality as excellent or good.

“I think the emergence of many new tools and techniques to assess data and the auditors’ ability to assimilate those in a meaningful manner is probably the current challenge people see,” said Christensen. “In the era of Big Data, there are clearly opportunities to capture and utilize that. We’re seeing that more and more in our daily life. The ability to assess, monitor and even create predictive behaviors from data sets around business processes assists auditors and stakeholders to increase the ability to adapt and adjust their businesses accordingly.”

Protiviti found that 34 percent of the auditors surveyed are planning to add more staff with analytics skills.