NEW! Internal Audit Foundation and Deloitte Report — “Moving Internal Audit Deeper Into the Digital Age, Part 2″
The Internal Audit Foundation and Deloitte conducted an online survey among IIA members to gain insight into where different internal audit organizations stand with respect to auditing automation and cognitive technologies. Based on responses from internal audit leaders across a broad range of companies, the key findings shed light on where many organizations are making progress and where gaps may still remain. These key findings are outlined and explored in a three-part report series.
The second release, “Moving Internal Audit Deeper Into the Digital Age, Part 2: What Internal Audit Needs to Think About When Auditing Automation” is now available for download.
When modern automation tools enter an organization, they do not arrive alone. They bring with them a number of new risks. As discussed in the first part of this series, automation and cognitive technologies can potentially go a long way toward improving organizational responsiveness, speeding process execution, increasing process accuracy, lowering costs, and freeing workers from routine tasks so they can focus on strategic, value-generating activities. While modern automation tools can replicate many of the tasks traditionally carried out by humans, they simultaneously raise the bar on what is required of the people who must work alongside them.
As companies embrace change through automation, internal audit organizations must follow suit and adapt their approach to the expanding digital landscape. As reflected in the survey findings, despite growing involvement by internal audit, there is still a significant opportunity to go deeper and to add more value — that value can be found in part 2.
Part 2 explores six critical components of robotic process automation (RPA) and cognitive intelligence (CI), and examines the output of the automated process to determine the greatest areas of risk and how to audit them.
Six Critical Components of Automation Include:
- Governance and oversight
- Planning and alignment
- Return on investment (ROI)
- Policies and procedures
- Development standards
- Controls
Learn more about RPA in the second of this three-report series. Part 1 asked, “What is RPA & CI? How do you identify opportunities to use it and its applications?” while Part 3 will answer, “How can internal audit help set up governance architecture around new technologies?”
