Audit professionals from PwC recently teamed up with audit educators from the University of Pretoria (UP) in South Africa to provide an overview of the importance of incorporating data analytics into internal auditing during a two-day training in September 2021.
The UP’s Department of Auditing is one of 11 Centres of Excellence in Internal Auditing globally, as endorsed by the Global Institute of Internal Auditors, and the only such Centre in the Southern Hemisphere. Core to the department’s mission is preparing students to be work-ready as they pursue internal audit careers. Understanding computer-assisted audit techniques (CAATs) and tools are essential to keep pace in today’s digital world.
Professor Kato Plant, Head of the Department of Auditing; Rudrik du Bruyn, Head of the Centre for Internal Auditing; and Cobus Janse van Rensburg, Coordinator for the Postgraduate Degree in Internal Auditing, led the training program on internal auditing data analytics. The trio works closely with practitioners and the internal audit fraternity, both locally and internationally, to ensure UP’s curricula remains relevant to the current and future state of internal audit.
UP strives to educate and train its internal auditing students in theoretical concepts while providing practical exposure to audit software and data analytics in an effort to develop employable and innovative graduates. As part of the training data analytics content in the IT audit module for the graduate internal auditing degree, PwC and Wolters Kluwer partnered to offer practical training on using data analytics in audit and an overview of the TeamMate Analytics solution, a powerful Excel-based audit analytics tool from Wolters Kluwer, a global leader in audit management solutions.
The two-day training presented by PwC focused on providing students with an understanding of how CAATs function in the workplace and how to apply this knowledge to achieve set objectives assigned in a practical case study.
The training agenda included an illustration of the main TeamMate Analytics functions and commands, such as column statistics, summarize (quick summary, advanced summary, aging and stratify), extract (criteria matches, duplicates, and gaps), sampling, and Expert Analyzer (Workflow Manager).