“In real estate audits, as well as other types of audits, extensive manual operations are still prevalent,” says Nicholas Loguercio, CPA, CFE, a Berdon Audit Partner, member of the Executive Committee, and advisor to many of the firm’s real estate clients. “Together with CAR Lab, we will find ways to leverage today’s technology to accomplish these mundane and time-consuming tasks with greater efficiency.”
Among the manual tasks targeted by the Berdon/CAR Lab team are data extraction and migration, data comparison, data integration, data cleansing, and filling in audit work papers with data from Excel spreadsheets.
“This project aims to create a new approach to real estate assurance.” says Dr. Miklos Vasarhelyi, the director of the CAR Lab, “Auditing methodology is anachronistic and needs to be updated to not only serve as a method of assurance but also to help clients to improve their operations. Sampling and traditional risk assessment are outdated in the world of advanced analytics, AI, and big exogenous data.”
To enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the real estate company audits the Berdon/CAR Lab team will explore methodologies to automate and redesign some audit procedures by:
1. Establishing a user-friendly, flexible, and economical automation solution for auditors to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the audits.
2. Exploring the feasibility of automating and redesigning high-volume and repetitive audit tasks using Robotic Processing Automation.
“The work product and experience that will come from this partnership will be transformational to the future of real estate audits and how we deliver service as a firm,” says Clifford Forrester, Berdon Chief Information Officer. “This is only one of many initiatives on our innovation journey.”
Nicholas Loguercio – download a photo file
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