Audit & Assurance

Mercer & Hole's audit and business advisory partner Andy Turner gives his view on how technology is advancing the process of audit and what we might expect to see in the audit of tomorrow.

Where are we now?
The pace of technological change in recent years has been immense and innovation shows no signs of slowing down. Most audit firms have moved towards paperless files, Mercer & Hole included, and for all of us within the profession the challenge is to improve audit quality but this often comes with cost pressures too.

Technology can improve both audit quality and drive efficiencies into the audit process and there is a real need to ensure this is incorporated into the audit process – if a firm does not they may not be giving their clients the best possible service. The audit of the future definitely needs to incorporate technology in what is fundamentally a three step process:

1. Extraction of the data;
2. Performing analytics on the data; and
3. Investigation of exceptions

Read the entire article on AccountancyAge.