In any organization, the financial and auditing department are vital pillars towards assisting the organization in meeting the mission and vision. When organizations have allocated resources such as finances for company use, and there is no effective monitoring of these resources, then there will be a misappropriation of the funds. The employees in these departments, auditors, accountants, data analysts or finance analysts have a challenge which is the storing as well as analysis of company data. Organizational processes such as gathering and importing information from different data sources and in various formats and presenting data trends and forecasts are challenges that financial and auditing professionals face in the organization (Blossfeld & Prein, 2019). Hence, dependence on technology tools aids in overcoming these challenges. An example of a data technology that the financial experts can use in forensic analysis is 1DEA software. IDEA is a data analysis software which is comprehensive and authoritative. It is a software that is easy to use and quickly helps the financial employees and auditors to conduct forensic analysis. IDEA helps in analyzing 100 per cent of the gathered data by the forensic investigators. When the investigation is done, the software, IDEA gives the users a guarantee that the outcome of the analyzed data will have integrity. The analysis outcome also will propel on the performance of data analytics which results in faster and effective data audits in the financial organization.
Financial experts and auditors prefer IDEA data technology to perform forensic analysis in organizations because the software integrates with various solutions. IDEA allows for a secure method in exporting and obtaining data. IDEA can connect to SAP solutions, CRM systems, organizational accounting packages and available enterprise solutions to achieve data analysis and communicate with other departmental data and experts in financial solution generation (Correia, Pedrosa & Costa, 2019). IDEA also helps auditors and financial analysts to import data from any data source that is available through the application of universal file conversion capabilities. The data imported can be transformed into PDFs or reports for easy reading, understanding and analysis for forecasting in the organization.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
IDEA has a discover and visualize feature. It is one that automatically helps in pinpointing trends, patterns, correlations and give insights about outliers. Data input in these features causes the display of customizable panels. IDEA also allows auditors and financial experts to use the data in sharable dashboards which is advantageous as these dashboards allow for quick identification of the risk areas and allow for a focused audit to be conducted in the organization (Correia, Pedrosa & Costa, 2019). When risk environments are identified by the tasked financial experts, a discussion with relevant stakeholders is appropriate so that the organization can be aware of the challenges and establish mechanisms that can be implemented to overcome these challenges.
When conducting forensic analysts, auditing is part of the process. IDEA presents the auditors with an audit trail that they can trust and focus on the results. IDEA has a unique project overview feature. Through the project overview feature, there is a graphical representation of tasks that are completed during data analysis which helps in the creation of databases to save on time during forensic analysis. The databases that are deleted or changed are presented to the forensic analysts to make decisions or have a look at the changes and detect any abnormalities that might occur in the process of deleting. The information is applied by financial experts conducting analysis to export the report for sharing purposes. Moreover, IDEA helps in quick identification of similar records. It has a feature, the fuzzy duplicate which allows the financial analysts to identify on multiple files that can be used in detecting data entry errors It also helps in detecting different data recording conventions that are used for fraud and eliminate anomalies in businesses.
References
Blossfeld, H. P., & Prein, G. (2019). Rational choice theory and large-scale data analysis . Routledge. https://core.ac.uk/reader/43584590
Correia, T., Pedrosa, I., & Costa, C. J. (2019). Open Source Software in Financial Auditing. In Organizational Auditing and Assurance in the Digital Age (pp. 188-202). IGI Global. https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/open-source-software-in-financial-auditing/222626
