1

CASE STUDY

CHALLENGESAccessing a variety of data systems

on disparate platforms

Ensuring data security

Managing time and staffing pressures

SOLUTIONData Analysis

INDUSTRYBusiness Services

REGIONNorth America

KEY BENEFITSEnhanced corporate efficiency

Accessed data from multiple IT systems

Reduced reporting time from nine weeks to 40 minutes

DESERET MANAGEMENT CORPORATIONVERSATILE TECHNOLOGY FOR ENHANCED BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

Deseret Management Corporation, a holding company for eight diverse subsidiaries, uses ACL’s innovative data analysis solutions to help its external audit team gain seamless access to a wide variety of computer platforms and company data; perform continuous monitoring activities; analyze business operations for better resource allocation; and target data variances and controls assurance issues. With ACL, Deseret Management has a powerful solution to monitor its diverse business interests and continue its commercial successes.

Customer ProfileDeseret Management Corporation (DMC), organized in 1966, is a holding company that oversees eight subsidiary companies. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, DMC provides financial, tax, budgeting, treasury, cash management, information technology, accounting, and auditing services to its subsidiaries

ChallengesDMC’s subsidiaries have a wide range of business interests and holdings. Each company uses a variety of data management systems and platforms, which created considerable challenges for the DMC audit staff.

“We were bottlenecked and faced challenges gaining access to the various databases within our systems,” explains DMC Senior Auditor Steven K. Johnson. “We had to coordinate with several different IT systems and assure each department that data security wouldn’t be compromised by our gaining better access to their information.”

With only 16 financial and operational professionals to audit and consult with the subsidiary companies, the DMC auditing department management often found their resources stretched thin. These time and staffing pressures meant that the DMC team couldn’t gain its desired data analysis coverage, and relied on sampling to conduct business assurance practices. In 1999, DMC Audit Director Ivan Briggs started the search for a tool to help his department easily and effectively analyze and test a diverse array of business information.

SolutionAfter evaluating a number of products, DMC chose ACL’s software as the tool to analyze data drawn from multiple platforms and to handle large data files. It’s critical for DMC to have a direct connection to subsidiary information systems and access to complete data files. “With ACL, we can perform all of our data analysis using ODBC access without any requests to the IT department of each individual company,” explains Johnson. “ACL allows us to perform continuous monitoring and get direct access to the data we need.”

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CASE STUDY

130205-Success_Story_Business_Deseret

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Originally published, 2011

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As DMC works to produce maximum results with minimum resources, ACL is enabling the audit team to create and track Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for each subsidiary company. With ACL, staff is beginning to continuously monitor these KPIs and analyze the data to make resource and time allocation decisions. The results have been extremely valuable.

DMC Senior Auditor Michael Schaff led one subsidiary’s audit team to create a financial statement variance analysis routine that consolidated nine weeks of data input, analysis, and spreadsheet generation into a 40-minute process. The ACL script also allowed the analysis to be done on a frequent basis, making critical information available faster to DMC management. Across the board, ACL technology has allowed DMC auditors to write and share analysis scripts that are valuable to all the subsidiary companies—freeing up time and resources to focus on data anomalies and business enhancement opportunities.

ACL data analysis software has also given DMC 100 percent testing and monitoring capabilities, rather than simply sampling data for business controls assurance.

“We have broader and deeper coverage with ACL,” says David Johnson, Senior Audit Manager. “We’re able to work much more efficiently and analyze a broad spectrum of data, rather than just performing sample audits.”

Finally, ACL data analysis has given DMC the power to access and analyze files of any size. Recently, when DMC’s Finance division was organizing an economic

impact analysis, they needed to analyze extremely large amounts of data in a very limited time period. With ACL, DMC audit staff analyzed and reported required information from all the files in just two days. “It was amazing to the Finance department that we could selectively pull, organize, and analyze such a large amount of data in such a short period of time,” says DMC Audit Supervisor Clint Halverson.

ResultsDMC relies on ACL’s data analysis solutions to:

■■ Enhance corporate efficiency by enabling better management of staff schedules, workload, time, and resources.

■■ Effectively access and analyze data drawn from multiple IT systems supporting eight subsidiary companies.

■■ Reduce time from nine weeks to 40 minutes to generate summary financial statement reports and highlight variances.

■■ Create and track Key Performance Indicators to enhance service and profitability.

■■ Solve challenges of remote data access and analysis when conducting on-site audits of subsidiaries.

"ACL TECHNOLOGY IS OUR PRIMARY

TOOL FOR DATA ANALYSIS

ACTIVITIES. IT IS ALSO A

CRITICAL FOUNDATION FOR OUR

BUSINESS PLANNING WORK.

WHEN OUR STAFF PLAN AUDITS,

WE SPECIFICALLY ASK HOW

THEY WILL USE ACL TO MAKE

THE PROJECT MORE EFFICIENT

AND GAIN A DEEPER, MORE

WIDESPREAD UNDERSTANDING

OF OUR COMPANY DATA AND

BUSINESS SYSTEMS."

-DAVID JOHNSON, SENIOR AUDIT MANAGER