A recent article from Deloitte in the Wall Street Journal notes the opportunity for internal audit to take advantage of Big Data and data analytics. Sure, it’s a sponsored article as part of Deloitte’s relationship with the WSJ, but the article nonetheless has some good nuggets of wisdom on how internal audit can benefit from Big Data.
As the article points out, internal audit is uniquely situated to get access to data in various parts of the organization and take advantage of conducting analysis across those data sets. “It is important to note that internal audit is the only function that can have access to all of an organization’s data, enabling it to combine, for example, HR data with operational data, or HR data with financial data. The broader organization doesn’t generally look at such datasets in a single view, but internal audit can — and as a result it can derive uncommon insights that provide significant value at the end of the day.
“If internal auditors use that insight to plan their audits and understand the realities of the business before they actually get into the field and begin to audit, that can very much shape the audit — and the value they bring to the business,” says Neil White, a Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory principal and Global Internal Audit Analytics leader at Deloitte & Touche LLP.
As White points out, internal audit cannot conquer Big Data and data analytics on its own. Rather, organizations should consider setting a strategy for the future state of such an analytics program and develop a long-term roadmap for how to get there. 