Comment l'utilisation du Data Analytics peut-elle améliorer la performance de l'audit financier ?

Abstract

Financial audit plays a key role in our society, it provides the assurance that the financial statements represent a fair view of the financial health of companies. This assurance is valuable for a wide range of stakeholders: investors, governments, suppliers… And due to the current economic climate and the increasing need for reliable financial information, those stakeholders always expect more assurance from auditors. On their side, the audited companies have evolved through the years to become very complex and computerized structures which book huge amounts of transactions. This makes the work of auditors tougher than ever. In order to meet the demand of the stakeholders and to face the growing complexities of audited entities, audit companies must reinvent their processes and use new technologies. That is the reason why, leading audit companies are investing in Data Analytics. This technology, which is already used in many other industries, has the potential to significantly improve the performance of financial audit companies. We will start this thesis by providing a clear understanding of financial auditing and its process. Then, the concepts of Big Data and Data Analytics will be defined. Once the basic notions will be described, we will explain how can Data Analytics enhance the performance of financial audits by presenting all the benefits resulting from the use of this technology in the audit field. We will also analyse the different hurdles that audit companies are facing while implementing Data Analytics in their audit process. To go beyond the literature, a qualitative research has been conducted in three audit companies to analyse and compare their strategy regarding Data Analytics. Thanks to these interviews, we will also check if the literature is in line with the reality of the auditors’ work. We will conclude this thesis by providing some best practices in order to advise audit companies which are implementing Data Analytics in their audit process or are about to do so.