Delivering technology as an advantage
George Katako, managing partner at SCG, has led the firm to A1 classification by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ghana (ICAG). This is the top classification for firms, including the big four, in Ghana. SCG understands the industry can no longer ignore technology in the accounting audit and assurance space.
Through incremental deployments of various tools over several years, technology has become an advantage for SCG. Building technology into its strategy and methodologies is imperative and innovative for the business requirements and SCG clients.
SCG knew that data and AI would change the audit approach, but it was uncertain it could find a suitable solution for a small firm in Ghana.
The implementation and use of advanced technology has also become critical in attracting and retaining candidates who come to SCG to begin careers in many facets of the firm.
Traditional tools caused a data process and analytics bottleneck within the audit process. SCG was open to exploring and using AI audit tools if it could find an affordable solution to improve audit risk and assurance abilities.
Factors That Led SCG to Consider MindBridge
SCG chose MindBridge to help its auditors, accountants, and financial professionals become more efficient, deliver better services, and add value to clients
MindBridge provided a means to grow into advanced data analytics with the support and pace the firm required.
The firm’s primary objective for investing in an AI data analytics solution was to focus on risk identification and gain business insights, but the implementation has driven greater exploration than anticipated.
SCG quickly established expertise in data cleansing and ingestion for MindBridge.
With this efficient process in place and support from MindBridge, SCG began to direct more responsibility to the auditors by helping them ask for the right information from clients on general and other ledger data, running analyses through MindBridge, and interpreting outcome scores and results for more effective low- to high-risk discovery.
With this efficient process in place and support from MindBridge, SCG began to direct more responsibility to the auditors by helping them ask for the right information from clients on general and other ledger data, running analyses through MindBridge, and interpreting outcome scores and results for more effective low- to high-risk discovery.
Outcome:
“SCG records time spent on each engagement. Before MindBridge, it would take a day to run a full analysis of a data set, but with MindBridge, this analysis was significantly reduced,” Katako says.
SCG chose MindBridge for its leading proprietary core controls and anomaly detection. Enabling audit teams to analyze 100% of transactional data helped SCG improve its audit quality and assurance for its clients.
As a public firm, we seek to do an outstanding job every time. To do that, we must have the right attitude, knowledge, and tools,” says Katako. “MindBridge has completely changed how we see our clients’ audits.
MindBridge made the transition easy. With their support to help with deployment and customer needs, an in-depth Knowledge Base, and the MindBridge Academy for training and ongoing professional development during the low season, MindBridge made sense for SCG’s technology journey.
An in depth look at how MindBridge improved audit quality and assurance for SCG
What’s next for SCG and Mindbridge?
SCG will continue to focus on data, deploying MindBridge into other assignments that are not audit-related and centering efforts on the core of the SCG business. This means getting feedback from the primary audit team and clients to improve the scope of data analytics.
Near-term use cases:
- Use MindBridge for transaction testing and substantive testing:
• Income: Proceeds from sales
• Expenses: Capital expenditures, expenses on goods and services - Intensify analysis on receivables and payables
- Deploy the tool for control testing
SCG is also continuously educating and training the audit team. It uses MindBridge Academy for targeted courseware and online learning and maintains a connection with the MindBridge customer success team to provide champions and audit teams with updates on new capabilities and features within the MindBridge cloud platform.
