Identifying Fraud
Hungerford Vinton performs different types of audits for its clients, including T&E audits,
audits of governmental systems and recovery audits. Here’s a great example of how
Monarch helped the auditors save one of their clients money.
One of the firm’s auditing teams was performing a T&E audit for this client. After running
the salient reports through Monarch and exporting that data into Microsoft Excel and
Microsoft Access, the auditors were able to dig in to the data.
What the data revealed was an anomaly in an expense report. One of the client’s
employees submitted an expense report with a very large restaurant bill. At first glance,
the amount spent could be attributed to hosting several clients to an expensive dinner.
But one single line item triggered a deeper dive into the data. There was a $500 tip on
the bill. The auditors looked at this and applied some common sense to the issue: most
restaurants incorporate the tip into the final bill when there are more than six people in
the party. After investigating the issue, the auditors confirmed it was fraud on the part
of the employee. He was pocketing the $500 “tip.” This issue then resulted in a larger
investigation into additional fraud by that employee.
“The Altair Platform enabled us to identify and escalate fraud in a matter of hours, not
days,” adds Hungerford. “As a result, we were able to look deeper into the employee’s
behavior and ultimately saved the client thousands of dollars.”
The Real Value of Data Preparation
“Our clients range from ‘mom and pop’ shops to Fortune 500 businesses,” says Hungerford.
“It would take untold hours and resources for us to learn the systems and data formats used
by our clients. Instead, we can just run that data through Monarch and have the data we need
in just minutes, which delivers rapid results for our clients.”
That time savings means more strategic analysis, leading to more findings, which helps
the audit firm deliver outstanding service to its clients. This reputation for excellent service
and strategic counsel results in greater client retention and increased new business
opportunities. The benefit of data preparation goes beyond saving clients money.
The audit firm has standardized on the Datawatch Platform, allowing all its auditors to use
repeatable processes and report models to easily and effectively transform audit data.
This standardization not only ensures the quality and consistency of the firm’s audits,
but also makes it very easy for the audit teams to work with new clients.
“The ‘before’ and ‘after’ of our use of Altair Platform paints a striking picture,” comments
Hungerford. “Without Monarch, data prep for a single audit would take
six to eight times longer.”
With Monarch, the audit firm reduced the time spent on audit data prep from 15 hours
to as little as 2 minutes - a 99% time savings, which translates into thousands of dollars
saved per audit.
The Altair data preparation solution provides more efficient data prep and standardized
data analysis processes, which in turn deliver much greater insights into the data,
delivering greater profitability for the audit firm and its clients.