Data Analytics – The Future of the Auditing Profession

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported on the increasing attention business schools are giving to teaching students about data analytics. This is a critical skill that all auditing professionals should be embracing.

The traditional audit approach of selecting a sample of transactions to review is really obsolete. The  skilled auditor uses data analysis and data mining techniques to examine all of the transactions in a file to look for trends, patterns or outliers that are indicative of fraud or errors. They can then narrow down the problem population for further analysis.

Bernie Madoff demonstrated that he could produce millions of fraudulent documents AND THE AUDITORS PROVED THEY COULDN’T DETECT THEM!

If in fact the auditors (or regulators) had been using data analysis techniques, they might have been able to detect trading patterns that were not consistent with daily stock prices. They might have stopped this scandal long before it harmed so many people.

In New York, I lead the effort to move to sophisticated audit tools including data analysis, data mining, and data mapping in the Medicaid program and in auditing all of the State’s expenditure transactions. These efforts dramatically increased the audit findings, enabling more auditors to use the tools effectively and resulted in cost savings approaching $2 billion in the last year.

The challenge though is to increase the skill level of the staff to use and embrace these tools.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

Business Schools Plan Leap Into Data

Faced with an increasing stream of data from the Web and other electronic sources, many companies are seeking managers who can make sense of the numbers through the growing practice of data analytics, also known as business intelligence. Finding qualified candidates has proven difficult, but business schools hope to fill the talent gap.

This fall several schools, including Fordham University's Graduate School of Business and Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, are unveiling analytics electives, certificates and degree programs; other courses and programs were launched in the previous school year.

International Business Machines Corp., which has invested more than $14 billion buying analytics industry companies such as Coremetrics and Netezza Corp. since 2005, has teamed up with more than 200 schools, including Fordham, to develop analytics curriculum and training.

"The more students that graduate knowledgeable in areas we care about, the better it is not just for our company but the companies we work with," said Steve Mills, IBM senior vice president and group executive of software and systems. "It really comes down to what clients and customers need most."

Data analytics was once considered the purview of math, science and information-technology specialists. Now barraged with data from the Web and other sources, companies want employees who can both sift through the information and help solve business problems or strategize. For example, luxury fashion company Elie Tahari Ltd. uses analytics to examine historical buying patterns and predict future clothing purchases. Northeastern pizza chain Papa Gino's Inc. uses analytics to examine the use of its loyalty program and has succeeded in boosting the average customer's online order size.

As the use of analytics grows quickly, companies will need employees who understand the data. A May study from McKinsey & Co. found that by 2018, the U.S. will face a shortage of 1.5 million managers who can use data to shape business decisions.

XO Communications, a business-to-business telecommunications-services company, has been looking to increase its analytics team but is coming up short. Trent Taylor, director of customer intelligence at XO, said it isn't easy to find someone who can pick up the business context while understanding statistics and how to structure a project. Cris Payne, senior manager of customer intelligence, said XO would "strongly consider" hiring M.B.A.s if they had such abilities.

Fordham this fall will introduce a required analytics course—Marketing Analytics —for M.B.A. students on its marketing track. "Historically, students go into marketing because, they 'don't do numbers,'"said Dawn Lerman, director of the business school's Center for Positive Marketing. But these days, with so much data available surrounding consumer behavior, "you can't hide from math and statistics and be a good marketer."

Ms. Lerman said the new class is intended to address marketing metrics related to in-store and online brand performance. Fordham also plans to introduce a master of science in Market Intelligence in 2012.

The University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce has been working with data-warehousing company Teradata Corp. for years to make analytics a bigger part of students' curriculum, said Barbara Wixom, associate professor and director of the M.S. in Management of IT program at McIntire.

The school this fall will introduce an elective track focused on analytics and also will start working with IBM. "What has changed is the type of students who want these tools," Ms. Wixom said. Nowadays analytics is being used in classes for marketing and finance; not just IT, she said.

"Analytics is certainly in the top five things [executives] are worried about and investing in actively," said Scott Gnau, president of Teradata's Teradata Labs. "Industry is going to demand it. Students are going to demand it."

Consulting companies, especially those with clients in IT, marketing and sales, also have a need for employees with a background in analytics.

Deloitte LLP paired up with Indiana University's Kelley School of Business last November to offer a certificate in business analytics to its midlevel employees. The certificate program included courses like Business Analytics Foundations and Data Mining and Visualization. The school tailored a similar certificate for employees of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

And beginning this September, Kelley M.B.A. students will be given the option to major or minor in business analytics.

Meanwhile, the Villanova School of Business is revamping undergraduate requirements to include more statistics. It began introducing new courses over the past few years. Beginning with this fall's incoming freshman class, the school will replace some of its calculus material with statistics and add an Introduction to Business Analytics course.

The Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School of Management offers students the chance to work on analytics projects for, and with, companies. One such project with an accounting software company used analytics to search customer feedback for signs of dissatisfaction and suggestions for improvement.

Ivan Dremov, a 2011 Yale M.B.A. graduate with a background in executive recruiting, who worked on this project, said it prepared him to do similar work at his new employer, a New York area strategy consulting firm. "When you tell them you can do an analytics project using sophisticated software, it's definitely something they pay attention to," he said.