Mohamed Elborno
When I began my career in Audit with PwC over 20 years ago, there was a lot of talk in the industry about what the audit of the future would look like; would we rely heavily on technology instead of traditional methods? Today, the role of the auditor has changed, from someone who draws conclusions at a specific time after a client has closed books, to someone who identifies issues and brings insights throughout the year, giving clients real time information to steer their businesses to success. So how did this happen so fast?
COVID-19 and the need to build trust and deliver sustained outcomes
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought accelerated change for many businesses and equally has been a catalyst for the adoption of digital transformation as a tool to propel organisations to make further adjustments to their business and operating models to ensure resilient value preservation and creation. According to the latest Middle East findings of our PwC Global Crisis Survey 2020 “41% of Middle East respondents say the pandemic has positively impacted their business, double the global survey average.” The significant proportion of regional business leaders who believe their companies have been strengthened by the crisis illustrates the resilience of organisations inured to external shocks and corporate cultures. A greater number of Middle East respondents say their organisation already had a designated core response team prior to the crisis, and that the wider organisation was aware of the team’s responsibility for responding to external shocks and emergencies.
It also illustrates the ability of organisations to adapt at speed and pivot quickly in the face of uncertainty, along with the cushioning impact of various government support programmes in the UAE and other Middle East countries. The view that tackling a crisis can act as a springboard for growth is echoed by the Middle East respondents to PwC’s latest CEO Survey, with more than half of them expressing confidence that their organisation’s revenue will increase over the next one to three years.
How the world of Audit pivoted in the face of disruption
As our region emerges from the pandemic, we are entering the next phase of transformation, driven by changes like technology disruption and climate change that have been magnified and accelerated by the pandemic, which will both be massive in scale and move at an even greater pace than before. Our recently launched network-wide strategy, The New Equation, responds to these fundamental changes, focused on two interconnected needs organisations face, today: the need to build trust and the need to deliver sustained outcomes.
In a fast changing, technology-driven world, building and maintaining trust has never been more important or challenging. Providing trust over financial reporting is a big responsibility, and it lies at the heart of everything we do. When it comes to building trust, quality remains our bedrock and aside from technology, we demonstrate our sustained commitment to quality through many things such as prioritising a learning culture, core quality control, maximising our investments through Acceleration Centres and Centres of Excellence, the power of our people and bringing the right knowledge to our audits.
With that said, a high quality audit begins with and requires a ‘perfect blend of people and technology’. Which is why not only our tools, but our people, have remained a priority throughout the pandemic. Our continued focus on technology investment over recent years meant that our teams were able to quickly and seamlessly transition to working remotely with the onset of COVID-19. From the early stages of the pandemic, the PwC network offered comprehensive guidance to highlight areas of critical importance to ensure we did not compromise on audit quality. Locally we were able to implement changes to our existing policies and procedures in light of the increased complexity and risk.
Harnessing Next Generation Audit technology to drive business resilience in the Middle East
Through it all, we’ve continued to thrive in providing digitally upskilled audits that put quality first. That’s what drives us and it’s how we’re bringing the audit into the future. We are constantly reimagining the possible by embracing cutting edge technology that becomes part of how we work. We use it in new and innovative ways to bring greater insights and value to our clients.
A few of these technologies include:
- Aura: Our cloud-based platform is the engine that powers the audit, providing quality and consistency throughout the audit.
- Halo: Our award-winning, market-leading technology that harnesses the power of data to help teams see what needs to be seen beyond the numbers on the page.
- Connect: Our collaboration platform provides fast, efficient and secure information sharing at every stage of the audit - creating a better audit experience for clients.
- Extract: Our suite of extraction tools optimises how we securely extract and transfer your data. Directly extracts large volumes of data seamlessly from systems. Eliminates the need for repeated, manual intervention through the data extraction process.
Building trust, through the transparency, objectivity and effectiveness of a high quality audit reporting that shareholders can rely on is absolutely critical. Today, trust is much broader encompassing cyber, data, supply chains, sustainability, worker practices and impacts the investor community, regulators, government and citizens alike.
We’re also witnessing the fast evolving (and non-financial) reporting landscape with ESG reporting fast becoming an essential, rather than a nice to have. Reporting strategy, and embedding that strategy through a robust system of processes and controls underpinned by technology; and through enhancing the credibility of the reporting by external assurance under internationally recognised non-audit assurance standards is becoming important.
What does it mean to be part of Audit of the future at PwC Middle East?
Looking ahead, we will be able to assure a broader spectrum of information and, in time, predict potential issues before they arise. We will continue to build more agile, tech-savvy teams that can respond faster and more effectively to client needs, who focus on helping build trust in society and solving clients’ most important problems.
We are changing how we deliver services and looking at a more distributed delivery model so that we are pulling the right experts and resources from across our diverse region, to meet specific client demands - whilst adhering to regulatory requirements/restrictions. We will make it easier for clients to protect their business and understand the implications of the fast-changing tech environment. We will continue to explain how AI is being used, tailor its use to clients’ needs and tell them why this is important for their business.
Now more than ever, we remain focused on audit quality and how the Audit practice needs to respond to these emerging challenges. It remains a very important time for the profession. The future of trust services is evolving and in a post COVID world, we continue to see even more changes and challenges. We are ready to embrace what the future holds for us!
