Audit Data & Analytics (D&A) has three main areas of focus. These are:

• enhanced audit quality
• client insights
• automation.

Sitting within the broader Audit division, we provide specialist data support for audit teams from planning through to execution.

We start by planning and designing D&A procedures for the audit. We extract data from a variety of client systems and we clean and sanitise large quantities of data. Following that, we analyse the data to identify risks and insights for the audit. We then visualise data so it’s in an easy to understand format then present findings to audit team and client management.

We’re all interested in the latest trends in technology and data. We have a strong focus on innovation through the testing and development of the new technologies including Microsoft Power BI, machine learning, blockchain technology, augmented reality and automation.

Our multi-disciplinary team has a depth of expertise in statistics, computer science and data analysis. There is a range of nationalities and degrees.

An average day would usually involve working with 2-3 audit teams. You may be transforming a client dataset into a useable format then creating a number of visualisations from scratch.

From this you might discuss preliminary results with your manager to investigate outliers and determine areas for further analysis. You’re basically looking to identify populations of high risk items for the audit team to sample and follow up with the client.

On top of this, you may be researching and trialling new analysis tools or writing some programming code for a new tool or automation as well as documenting D&A procedures performed in eAudit. Our team is relatively young and agile. We have lunch together most days.

You will learn a lot – starting with how to deal with large quantities of data (sometimes as big as 150+ million rows). You’ll come to understand data structures and how to process them for analysis. You’ll begin to become proficient in the day to day tool such as Tableau, Power BI, Alteryx, SQL and R programming, advanced excel, IDEA. You learn leading practices for using data to address key audit risk as well as how to identify insights and prepare visualisations of data. Plus, you’ll meet with clients and present findings with senior management.

You’ll be working with some of the latest innovations and technologies in data science and computing. Through this, you’ll be transforming an unintelligible collection of data from the client into actionable insights that bring value to the client – seeing the client finally understand what their data is telling them.

• Audit and Assurance services