Abandon ACL and Others, Part 2

This post is in response to Xavier and Grant, who were kind enough to push back a bit on a previous post, Abandon ACL and Others? See their comments on that post.

I will respond to some of their points and reveal some more of my thinking as to why I believe that auditors need to become a LOT more technical.

Some may think I am just digging my hole a little deeper, but I’ve always loved the journey.

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Abandon ACL and Others?

For the past few years, I’ve been outspoken about auditors that 1) don’t do much data analysis, OR 2) rely only on tools like ACL, IDEA, Arbutus, and the like to do their data analysis.

In this post, I’m going to provide some reasons auditors should not rely on only on these tools. I’ve dealt with this before, but I want to look at it from some different angles.

In this post, I’m speaking only to auditors, as they alone are called to audit the technology and processes their companies use.

In this post, when I mention ‘ACL+’, I am referring to ACL, IDEA, Arbutus, and any other tool that typically only auditors use. I’m also including ACL ‘Robotics’ in this list.

In this post, I’m going to step on people’s toes, but my readers should be used to that by now.

Will Robotics (RPA) Replace ACL?

In my last post, I described Why Internal Auditors Should Care about Robotic Process Automation.

In this post, I’ll explore whether RPA can replace analytic packages like ACL, IDEA, R, and Power BI.

That might seem like a strange question, but a few managers and a VP have asked me just that recently. Here’s how I’ve answered it.