The Internal Audit function looked to the CIO Applied Intelligence team within the global IT organization to collaborate on developing an innovative, intelligent solution. CIO Applied Intelligence’s aim is to bring greater insights to Accenture’s services using the enterprise-class analytics platform and data lake it developed for the company.
CIO Applied Intelligence and Internal Audit already had a long-running collaboration, including gaining an understanding of the analytics platform and the benefits it could offer. The analytics skill sets within Internal Audit allowed it to closely collaborate on the technical aspects of the project.
To begin, a CIO Applied Intelligence and Internal Audit team assessed the technology landscape established years ago and the respective constraints. Internal Audit lacked the ability to process very large data sets, limiting insights. Risk models were point in time, one dimensional and inflexible, making it challenging to include analytics in the planning phases of an audit. Full population data discovery and transactional-level analysis was not possible, often resulting in random sample testing. Finally, the technology was unable to support predictive analytics, a major area of opportunity.
The solution involved transitioning existing analytical assets to the already developed CIO Applied Intelligence analytics platform. The move allowed Internal Audit to join other Accenture functions in using a suite of leading analytical tools drawing on a common data lake aligned to Accenture’s data governance structure. These tools allow Internal Audit to prepare, transform and analyze data in ways it couldn’t do before. Additionally, the analytics platform significantly reduces complexity in developing analytics.
Transformation highlights include: