A question that came up in SuperUser round-table (4/16/08) …

Should Internal Audit teams create specialty data analytics groups to do all analytics work or should they cross-train their audit “generalists” to use analytics tools?

In favor of the specialty data analytics group -

• Highly-skilled data analytics professionals can be leveraged to perform all analytics tasks
• Less-skilled audit “generalists” can focus on executing audits and relying on analytics professionals  work product
• Lower expenses to implement audit analytics (i.e. software licensing fees, hardware) as fewer staff need to have the costly software or computer hardware to perform the tasks

In favor of cross-training all auditors to use analytics tools -

• High turnover in audit departments leads to shortage of skills and raises the risk that the ACL “gurus” may leave the group.
• Develops new skills among audit generalist to take on complex analytics tasks which will help them when they rotate into the business
• Greater acceptance of the value of analytics to the organization as more people become experienced in performing data analysis and using the result

Again, feel free to comment on this topic.