BE IN A POSITION OF STRENGTHSM

By Sumit

K.

BA, P , CISA, M IT E G C l, a P

rincipal

Sumit Pal spal@withum.com

Data mining is a hot buzz word government accountants and auditors are hearing these days, and with good reason. We live in a digital age where information is measured in bits and bytes and stored in databases, spreadsheets and microchips. However, data mining is not necessarily new. Food manufacturers have leveraged powerful computers to sift through volumes of supermarket scanner data and analyze market research reports for years. In todays world, data mining software is much more advanced yet user-friendly, and can be extremely useful to nance professionals who are seeking to pull together large amounts of data into one platform, improve efciencies, maintain data integrity and implement a continuous monitoring system to detect or prevent fraud.

Essentially, data mining is the process of discovering new patterns, or predictive behavior, from large data sets, whose results will provide useful information of which can inuence business decisions; identify areas of key risk, fraud, errors or misuse; improve business efciencies; or verify process effectiveness. It can be applied across all commercial businesses, ranging from start-ups and emerging stage, to small-to-mid sized organizations, to large multinational corporations. It also pertains to all levels of government, from local, city and state government, all the way up to the federal level. TRENDS IN THE MARKETPLACE Signicant trends in todays society are impacting the way we approach data mining projects. There is increasingly more and more data to mine and analyze, particularly with the ability to integrate operational data with customer, supplier and market information; unstructured data is growing signicantly faster than structured data; there are more users who want a self-serve way to mine their own data on-premises (which includes users who are less technically inclined); we all have less availability to complete sophisticated data mining and analysis tasks and need the time-saving tools to do so; and there are now many more mobile users who may want to access the data.

WithumSmith+Brown, PC
withum.com Certified Public Accountants and Consultants
New Jersey. New York. Pennsylvania. Maryland. Florida. Colorado

BE IN A POSITION OF STRENGTHSM

Data mining is a requirement in todays digital world, especially for auditors.

DATA MINING SOFTWARE As Eric Schmidt, Chairman and former CEO of Google remarked on October 11, 2011, In God we trust. But everyone else must bring data. It is important to recognize the true power behind data, and how to manage it as if protecting any other highly valued asset. There are a number of data mining tools available in the industry with various pricing structures. The right product depends on what your organization would need to process ranging from data source, type of data (structured, unstructured, images, etc.), your end objective, data volume, reports and charts desired, and so on. Depending on your organizations budget, inexpensive options could include a basic Excel program, while more sophisticated programs like the ones listed below can have prices ranging from moderate to expensive. Data mining is a requirement in todays digital world, especially for auditors. With overarching objectives shared by most organizations to maximize productivity, ensure built-in data integrity, analyze raw data to increase independence, and increase efciencies through time-saving features, repeatable work process, consistent service delivery and reduced training effort, the need for the right data mining tools is more relevant than ever in our day-to-day jobs. This article should help get you get started on the road to achieving great results with data mining tools.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sumit K. Pal, CGEIT, CISA, MBA, Principal, is an IT principal located in the rms New Brunswick ofce. He is certied in the governance of enterprise of IT (CGEIT) and is a certied information systems auditor (CISA). Sumit has more than 27 years of professional experience in business consulting and systems integration. Sumit is responsible for the rms IT consulting and IT audit services. He is also the team leader for the Intellectual Property and Royalty Audits niche. Sumits areas of expertise include Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 projects, IT audits, IT internal control assessments, operational reviews, SAS 70 examinations, internal auditing, business process analysis, business process documentation and re-engineering.

WithumSmith+Brown, PC
withum.com Certified Public Accountants and Consultants
New Jersey. New York. Pennsylvania. Maryland. Florida. Colorado