Principles of Analytic Monitoring

1. Principles of Analytic Monitoring Miklos A. Vasarhelyi Michael Alles Alexandr Kogan Rutgers Business School

2. The continuous assurance will change • 1) objectives • 2) levels and hierarchy • 3) timing • 4) process • 5) tools • 6) outcomes

3. Real Time Economy

4. Objective changes • 1) changes in the environment and industry, 2) the existence and effectiveness of controls, 3) increased human resource risks, 4) process continuity and integrity, and 5) coherence between endogenous and exogenous factors:

5. Effects on Controls • The existence of the controls, • That they are operational, • That their warnings are properly observed and distributed, • That the controls are comprehensive, covering all relevant aspect of operational risk.

6. ERPSs • Integration • Automation • Common processes and data • Facilitate the deployment of CA by providing a common platform

7. Supply, demand, technology and CA

8. The continuous assurance will change • 1) objectives • 2) levels and hierarchy • 3) timing • 4) process • 5) tools • 6) outcomes

9. Four levels of CA

10. Pensions: 4 levels of CA • Level 1: Flag and extract all transactions that pass resources between the company and its pension fund, extract all transactions that affect pension related ledger accounts and vouch for these transactions. • Level 2: GAAP specifies maximum and minimum contributions to pension plans as well as ways to account for pension obligations, and other pension related items. This level would create a logical template evaluating the obedience for the rules of ERISA and GAAP. • Level 3: On a more analytical level, the continuous assuror can examine the formally disclosed rules relative to pensions that allow for the organizations actuarial estimates. Accounting standards require the disclosure and usage of an interest rate in the assumptions about pension estimates such as interest rate, employee related obligations vis-à-vis age and years of employment, asset returns but the standards do not require a relationship between the historical returns of the fund and the future return assumptions. The future will bring corporate measurement rules that link endogenous and exogenous data in the measurement of business and its assessment. • Level 4: the auditor could make assertions at a strategic level about the appropriateness of pension plan funding and the quality of the management of the fund

11. The continuous assurance will change • 1) objectives • 2) levels and hierarchy • 3) timing • 4) process • 5) tools • 6) outcomes

12. Timing issues • Extensive Front end work • Monitoring of system changes • Alarm based intervention • Evergreen opinion (of different forms) • Automated interim work • Continuous confirmation • Very limited, if any, detail testing

13. The continuous assurance will change • 1) objectives • 2) levels and hierarchy • 3) timing • 4) process • 5) tools • 6) outcomes

15. Evidence • Major change on the nature of relied evidence • Automated confirmations will take a progressively larger role • Alarm frequency and nature will be evidential matter • Joint systems (with other entities) will become prevalent

16. The continuous assurance will change • 1) objectives • 2) levels and hierarchy • 3) timing • 4) process • 5) tools • 6) outcomes

17. Architecture

19. Tools for CA

20. Tools 2

21. Tools 3

24. Confirmatory Extranets

25. The continuous assurance will change • 1) objectives • 2) levels and hierarchy • 3) timing • 4) process • 5) tools • 6) outcomes

26. Assurance Hierarchies

27. Multiple Outcomes • Assurance of a wider range of stakeholders • Front-end work more consulting-like (Sarbanes – Oxley ???) • Opinions will be mainly negative assertions of the sort: no alarms level 5 occurred • Major cultural changes needed

28. Opinion with futurity • We have examined the reliability and financial reports of ABC corporation and have been engaged on a continuous assurance engagement for the fiscal year of xxxx. We will monitor the organization’s operations and strategic accomplishments using a wide set of analytics as described in http://www.ca.com/analytics and other analytics we deem appropriate and will report on an audit by exception basis when more than xx % variance is found in operational and strategic standards or when we deem it appropriate. This exception report will be issued to all customers registered ( paying ) at http://www.ca.com/analytics/customers