2011-12-01
Welcome to the December DataConsulting Newsletter!
I can’t believe it’s December already and Christmas is just around the corner. I realise many of you are busy with year-end related activities but hopefully you’ll be able to grab a few spare minutes to check through this final newsletter of 2011.
It’s been an exciting last few weeks particularly with ACL’s announcement of their ACL Acerno product which is an Excel add on allowing users to perform ACL style data analysis within Excel. We’ve covered Acerno in some more detail in the newsletter. This week has also seen me taking part in a great audit hour webinar with Celia Elmey from Logica. For those of you that missed it, the recorded version is now available.
Well all that remains is to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Best Regards,
Robin
The Microsoft® Excel add-in designed for all auditors
The recently released ACL Acerno is an add-in for Microsoft® Excel that is designed for working with data analysed in ACL Desktop™ or AuditExchange™. Purpose-built for audit, ACL Acerno makes Excel more efficient for investigating audit findings and seamlessly integrating these results into working papers.
Internal Audit – Supporting Good Governance, Supporting Growth
On 8th December Robin Clough, Managing Director of DataConsulting, and Celia Elmey, Head of Internal Audit at Logica, took part in the latest Audit Hour Series organised by ACL. Celia gave an excellent insight into how she has successfully introduced ACL and Data Analytics into her audit work programme.
Part 5 – Data acquisition and understanding
The fifth instalment in our series exploring the world of duplicate payments looks into data acquisition. We look at what data you require to perform your analysis, and how to obtain it.
1. Healthcare – Greater Baltimore Medical Center
The GBMC Internal Audit team reviews large data files that represent critical control areas, including system access privileges and federal vendor regulations. The organisation had become proficient with automated data analysis and recently implemented an ACL managed analytics solution to enhance efficiency and reduce manual sampling. The solution includes scheduling capabilities that enable users to run data tests at pre-determined times.
2. Healthcare – Mercy Health
U.S. healthcare costs are rising faster than inflation, so it’s critical for the team at Mercy Health to mitigate supply chain risks and work proactively to prevent fraud. Audit analytics enable Internal Audit to surpass its traditional assurance role and to deliver significant cost savings and enhance productivity. The Business Risk team now integrates ACL into its planning process and applies the technology to each audit project.
3. Manufacturing – Mineral mining company
This company operates a mineral mine in Africa with 13,000 employees and annual revenues exceeding £640 million and uses ACL solutions for crime prevention and classified operations.
What’s wrong with spreadsheets?
It’s not uncommon for company directors and department managers to rely on spreadsheets when running their business. You may know some yourself. Whilst for the majority this works well, when spreadsheets go wrong the impact on the business can be catastrophic. This report highlights some of the issues and remedial actions that can be taken to mitigate the risks presented by End User Computing.
ACL Insight is a news magazine published by ACL Services to provide news, case studies and guidance to audit, finance and compliance professionals on the use of audit analytic technology. The December-April newsletter is out now.
Part 1 – Introduction
We all know where to go when we have an IT problem? Or when your salary isn’t paid. In fact most areas of the business we are familiar with, except one. When it comes to data, it can be something of a quandary. The first part of our new series intoduces the importance of Data Governance to everybody.
Christmas Day: 25th December 2011
ACL 182 Concepts and Practices: London, 6-8 February 2011
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