Internal Audit

[shawnbearsphelan]

Hello,

I am Shawn and I work with CommScope a telecommunication company and I am looking to connect with other internal audit share use cases of Alteryx.  We have been using Alteryx for a little over 6 months. 

[JeremyN]

I'd be interested in connecting on Internal Audit use cases for the Financial Services industry or any common process in HR/AP/etc.

[parmlalli]

Hi Shawn,

I'm an Alteryx partner and am certified in Alteryx.  I also happen to be doing analytics within the IA space for over 19 years.  If there's anything you need help with, don't hesitate to reach out.

Thanks,

Parm

[parmlalli]

Hi,

I have a lot of experience developing analytics for Financial Services as well as common processes for HR, TNE, AP, etc.  Is there anything specific you're looking for?

Parm

[shawnbearsphelan]

Thanks for reaching out.  I have currently used Alteryx for T&E, AP, and General ledger, but I would looking to expand into inventory and sales.  I would especially interested in any predictive analytics.

[JenP]

Hello everyone. We just started using Alteryx in our internal audit group.  I would love to discuss ideas and use cases as well.  I'm using a Benfords Law workflow and a Principal Components workflow for an upcoming audit.  

Jen

[parmlalli]

HI Shawn,

There's a lot of different analytics you can perform for sales / inventory from an audit perspective.  An example of a few are as follows:

1. Analyze the difference between actual costs and standard costs
2. Check product reordering volume by Vendor, warehouse, and item
3. Identify products with zero prices or quantity
4. Isolate and analyze high value transactions by value, group, etc

However from a predictive analytics standpoint, I use it to identify outliers in the data population and/or help identify future spend on TNE and/or future expenses to Vendors on AP.

Hope this helps.

Parm

[shawnbearsphelan]

Thanks Parm for the information it is very helpful.  

Is it possible to create an internal audit user group to share ideas and possible solutions to workflow problems?  I think it could benefit all of us as we continue to grow our analytic capabilities.  We could have a periodic call to discuss trends, potential risk factors and problems we are facing.

[Itay_K]

Hi,

Could provide some details regarding the use of benford's law? did you built your own workflow? Did you had interesting findings based on it?

[JenP]

Greetings.  

We use Benfords Law to look at vendor invoice numbers in a payment file.  The distribution of the first digit of invoice numbers, by vendor,by invoice, should fall into expected probability buckets based on the BL algorithm. Also we compare:

• Same vendor in different divisions
• Same vendor over time

Attached is the workflow I found on the Community Forum.  We added some filters based on vendor attributes (like some Telecom vendors often use the phone number as invoice number, other vendors use the same invoice number repeatedly, etc.) 

Some people look at the distribution of the first 2 digits.  I haven't seen where that adds value to the results. 

If you set something up, make certain you are looking at the invoice level, not the itemized invoice level.  The itemized level will give false positives. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law