Increasingly, research is confirming the benefits of embedding process mining technology into a business’s systems audit architecture.
The International Journal of Accounting Information Systems research paper “Embedding Process mining into statement audits” (M. Werner Et al. June2021) summarised its findings as follows :
New data analysis techniques offer the opportunity to improve financial audits.
Process mining can replace manual audit procedures
It can be embedded into contemporary audits
Its implementation increases the reliability of the audit conclusion.
In this blog I share some of the insights TEC150 has gained in implementing Celonis based audit compliance checks.
Process mining is designed to discover, monitor, and ensure business process compliance by analysing actual 'event logs' in information systems. Process owners can review exactly what happened during the execution of their processes in real time. Process mining can be used in three distinct and complementary ways :
Process discovery – Auto-build a process model of the real 'as is'
Process conformance – Auto-determine compliance from the 'as is' to the ideal model
Process enhancement – Ensure compliance through audit violation workbench
Below is a comparison of Process Mining and Traditional Process Assurance Methods :
TEC150 Celonis audit solutions make use of the following capabilities:
Process Discover and Conformance checker
Mining Real Digital Business Process
Comparison against your 'to be' gold standard models
Violation detection
Alerting embedded in operational mode
Process Explorer / Process AI
Visualization and analysis of processes
Process Variants
The conformance checker will allow your business to automatically compare a reference process model with the actual process flows discovered from the data. The difference between the model and actual flows is returned in the form of a list of violations, which can include observed behaviour that is not allowed by the model, as well as behaviour that is in the model but not observed in reality.
Process AI provides you an easy overview of the process deviations (figure 1):
Most common path: Displays the most common flow of activities within your process.
KPIs: Displays predefined KPIs such as case count and activities count.
Detected deviations: Displays the activities that cause the most deviations from the common path. Celonis calculates how many of your cases are affected and how that affects your business.
Root cause analysis: You can perform a root cause analysis that leverages process intelligence to identify the reasons for the selected deviation.
Typical Process Discovery Case Study Examples
A typical Celonis audit dashboard is shown below.
If you would like to know more about how Celonis can enhance your audits, please feel free to contact us.
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