Traditional audits are time-consuming and stressful, and they may be holding back organizations from reaching their full growth potential.
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. organizations feel the audit process hinders their business growth, according to a new
The stress is twofold: 62% point to the amount of time it takes to prepare audits, and 61% cite the manual nature of the process. The report also found that the larger the company and the greater the financial complexity, the more stressful the audit. And over three-quarters of finance leaders consider the "resource cost" of audits a cause of anxiety. Thirty-one percent find audits to be a "slow and cumbersome process, and 25% report feeling "burnt out" because of it. As a result, 19% of leaders in charge of managing the in-house audit process consider leaving their role.
Despite this sentiment, 95% of the respondents still believe annual audits can give them data-driven insights to support business growth. Seventy-two percent see an opportunity to improve processes and operations through operations, and 51% find comparing their performance against competitors to be highly valuable.
"Audit services must remain relevant to the modern digital business world," Inflo CEO Mark Edmondson said in a statement. "Clearly organizations see the value in their annual audits and the potential for them to drive better decision making. Yet the vast majority of organizations feel like they're not getting the value they crave. When the process is causing stress and burnout, with a significant knock-on effect on business productivity, it's clear something has to change."
The onus is on accounting firms to embrace modern approaches and advance their legacy tools. According to the report, over half of organizations want their audit firms to embrace more technology: 67% want firms to work more collaboratively with their auditors via cloud-based software, which can enable data-driven services and free up organizations' finance teams for business-critical tasks like corporate strategy.
"It's encouraging that organizations in the U.S. value collaboration with their accountancy firm and want even more," Edmondson said. "We must equip audit teams with the tools they need to deliver more effective and data-driven audit services. Accounting firms who recognize the demands of modern-day organizations and feed them with the insights they need will be most successful. It is only through embracing modernization to provide deep, data-driven insights that we will create more relevant audits for organizations and audit teams alike. This will set a new standard for the industry."
