How to Have Audit Analytics That Works — Part 3

7. Don’t forget the financial benefits — data analytics always brings economic benefits. To calculate them, estimate the time that will be saved using data analytics, multiply it by the hourly rate of an auditor, and calculate the savings. Then inform the relevant managers of the financial advantage.

For example, during an audit, the auditor may need to take a sample of 25 documents and review them. If it takes 12 minutes to review one document, the total time to do this will be 5 hours. Therefore, with an hourly rate of $60, the total cost of manual review will be $300 (5 hours * $60). On the other hand, developing and running data analytics over the same records may take 1.5 hours and, thus, cost $90. Therefore, the financial benefit of using data analytics, in this case, will be $300 — $90 = $210.

The above example relates just to one task in an audit. However, considering all possible cases, the savings will quickly add up.

8. Demonstrate the output of analytics — as the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. So it pays to show them the results to help your coworkers and managers better understand and accept data analytics.

Each data analysis you run produces exceptions, process performance indicators, and other relevant parameters. It is a good idea to display actual…