Digital Internal Audit: It’s a journey, not a destination has been saved
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Digital Internal Audit: It’s a journey, not a destination
The road map for IA functions to maximize the benefits of digital investment
As digital has become an essential enabler of strategy, Internal Audit (IA) functions are embarking on a digital journey that aligns with their vision and goals. Here’s an in-depth view of how IA can ride the digital wave to deliver better insights, quality, efficiency, and impact.
As organizations navigate new risk factors and require more from IA, chief audit executives are turning to digital transformation to help close the gaps. It would require leaders to deploy analytics, automation, and other tech solutions to increase efficiency, drive greater insights, decrease errors, and free up resources for value-added work. Integrating and embedding digital assets or enablers (technologies, channels, and ways of working) to transform existing operational processes and increase the value offered to stakeholders isn’t easy. It requires a cultural shift and a mindset of experimentation, innovation, and challenging the status quo. Digital transformation is the journey of IA functions to truly embed digital assets and ways of working into their function in line with their vision and strategy.
Digital Internal Audit: It’s a journey, not a destination
Embarking on the digital journey
Options to collect, curate, and analyze data have never been greater, and now is the time for IA to lay a strong foundation for the future. Business leaders and IA stakeholders increasingly rely on data to support critical decisions. Data enables fact-based decisions that can improve business strategies, operations, and grow the top line. Embracing the power of digital transformation in IA functions is a journey unique to every organization’s goals. However, one thing is common—the way to transformation requires both methods and mindset.
The advantages of digital investment in IA
Investing in digital opportunities can prove transformative for organizations. It enables increased automation, leading to a reduction of manual processes and improved assurance coverage. This investment also stimulates efficiency gains and significant cost savings throughout the audit life cycle. Furthermore, it enhances analytics capabilities across each audit phase, promoting greater insights from centralized data sources. Notably, it also aids in reducing staff turnover in the IA department while improving skillsets and strengthening stakeholder relationships across the organization. Lastly, it bolsters regulatory readiness, ensuring increased preparedness for regulatory responses and decreased regulatory risk. The expansion of digital capabilities throughout the IA function can help reveal outdated business processes and assign technology solutions to remedy them, thereby fostering a robust and resilient organization.
Considerations for IA functions
IA can catalyze positive change by bolstering data-driven decisions, providing insights, and predicting key risks. The digital transformation journey, though time-consuming, can revolutionize the IA function and its value. Successful IA functions commonly address four key elements:
- Understanding of organizational priorities, both short and long-term
- Alignment with the technology and data strategy of the enterprise
- Establishment of a strong vision and communication of its importance
- Recognition that this is a transformation and not just a project
The Deloitte approach to bringing digital to IA:
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