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TRANSFORM THE WAY YOU AND YOUR ORGANIZATION WORK WITH DATA –SELF SERVICE AUDIT ANALYTICS Increasing complexities of risks and incessant emergence of disruptive technologies are demanding substantial change in internal audit processes. In today’s world of constant disruption, internal audit should evolve into a dynamic and future-oriented function. Businesses need broad-spectrum audit processes that extend beyond reviewing the obvious. Auditors should adopt forward-looking IA approaches, and should be able to provide deeper and valuable insights on strategy, execution, emerging risks, and hidden opportunities. The 2016 Deloitte Global Chief Audit Executive Survey that polled more than 1200 CAEs from 29 countries and a diverse range of industries, reaffirms the growing need to conduct analytics-based auditing. More than a three quarter of the CAEs (79%) recommend the need for digital disruption and innovation to transform internal audit and enhance its value. The survey also cited the increasing relevance of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, and visual analytics. Is skill-gap a concern? More than half of CAEs (57%) who participated in the survey expressed their intense dissatisfaction about inadequate skills and insufficient expertise of audit teams. When left unaddressed, these skill gaps will weaken auditors’ capabilities to deliver on changing stakeholder expectations. Stakeholders expect more forward-looking analysis to uncover risks and hidden opportunities. Or, gone are the days of static audit reports and analysis of sample data. The Deloitte survey also cites risk anticipation (39%) and data analytics (34%) as the two groundbreaking innovations that are most likely to impact internal audit within the next five years. Changing business landscapes, technological advancements, and proliferation of data have brought forth the imminent need to leverage analytics and data visualization to increase the impact, influence, and effectiveness of internal audit Analytics Adoption Challenges Even after 30 years of inception of data analytics, many auditors continue to adopt conventional internal audit methods and lag in technology adoption. Wondering why? Here are some of the reasons: Can technology disruption be a savior? Advancements in technology are fundamentally changing the nature of the audit and improving its effectiveness and relevance. Here are a few game-changing technology solutions that auditors can harness effectively to enhance the way they work with data: 1.Self-service analytics – Smart analytics for all Self-service analytics is no more a buzzword. It’s the new norm. Self-service analytics empowers auditors to access data, perform queries, and create interactive reports that add richness and granularity to the insights derived. Anyone and everyone, with or without technical expertise, can harness the power of self-service analytics to work seamlessly with large data sets of any size or type, and discover savvy insights without having to write codes or learn programming languages. Key advantages of using self-service analytics tools: Explore your data and create ad-hoc reports without IT skills 2.Mobile Analytics – Audit insights on the go Regardless of the size of an organization or availability of data, it takes weeks to prepare and present comprehensive audit reports. The numbers are usually saved offline as large files or copied to multiple slides for boardroom meetings. Mobile data analytics enables a concise and easily accessible digital avatar of audit reports and dynamic dashboards that can be accessed on mobile devices to interact and proactively monitor the business information on the go. 3.Data Visualization When it comes to presenting audit data, reports and findings, one gets a single view of the entire raw data, all at once. This makes it difficult to decipher what is important and what isn’t, the reason why the point of sharing information gets defeated. Data visualization helps get a flexible and reliable way to identify and share pertinent information in a manner that everyone can easily understand. There are many reasons why auditing is ripe for self-service analytics and visualization driven transformation. There is more data to examine within limited time span. Most financial and operational transactions are moving online, and the number of variables, outliers, trends, and patterns to identify and analyze continue to increase each day. Visual analytics is the fastest way to analyze and understand structured or unstructured data of any size, without IT assistance. Visual technologies help speed up and improve decision making with heat maps, bubble charts, and interactive dashboards that are easy for C-suite executive, non-technical business users, and stakeholders to understand. Everything gets better when you can do it yourself, right? Self-service audit analytics and visualization too are not different. Benefits of self-service analytics in Internal Audit

The cloud-based approach delivers:

1. Better performance
2. More flexibility
3. Enhanced cost savings
4. Improved security
5. Facilitates excellent teamwork opportunities

Specifically, Tableau on AWS lets you process data more quickly and scale up or down resources as needed. Plus, you can access a range of AWS services to optimise your Tableau setup. AWS also provides tools to help you save money and a secure environment to protect against cyber threats and data breaches. Ultimately, Tableau on AWS enables teams to collaborate more efficiently, taking their data analysis and business intelligence to the next level.

There are several other benefits to using Tableau on AWS beyond scalability, cost, and security. Here are some additional insights:

1. Faster Deployment: With Tableau on AWS, you can deploy new instances of Tableau in minutes rather than days or weeks as you would with on-premises infrastructure. This is because AWS has pre-configured templates for Tableau that make it easy to spin up new instances quickly. 2. Better Performance: Tableau on AWS is designed to exploit AWS's high-performance infrastructure. Tableau runs faster and more efficiently on AWS than on traditional on-premises infrastructure. 3. Integration with Other AWS Services: Tableau on AWS integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, such as Amazon S3 for data storage, Amazon Redshift for data warehousing, and Amazon EMR for big data processing. This makes building a complete analytics solution easier by using Tableau and other AWS services. 4. Improved Disaster Recovery: With Tableau on AWS, disaster recovery is built. AWS provides automated backup and recovery services to quickly recover your Tableau environment and data if there is a disaster or outage. 5. Global Reach: AWS has data centres worldwide, meaning you can deploy Tableau in the region closest to your users for better performance. This is especially important for organisations with a global presence.

Overall, Tableau on AWS offers several advantages over on-premises infrastructure. By leveraging AWS's scalability, cost-effectiveness, and security, organisations can run Tableau more efficiently and with better performance. Additionally, AWS's integration with other services and global reach make it an attractive option for organisations looking to build a comprehensive analytics solution.

Tableau Server on AWS deployment options

The following list outlines the available options for deploying Tableau Server on AWS:
1. Self-Deployment on EC2 Instance: This option involves users provisioning and configuring an EC2 instance and deploying Tableau Server. This provides the most significant control over the deployment process and can be customised to specific needs. However, it also requires more expertise and effort from the user.
2. Quick Start Deployment: The Tableau Server on AWS Quick Start provides an automated deployment process using AWS CloudFormation templates. This simplifies the deployment process and ensures that best practices are followed. However, it may be less customisable than self-deployment.
3. AWS Marketplace Deployment: Tableau Server is also available on the AWS Marketplace with pre-built AWS CloudFormation templates. This provides a quick and easy way to deploy Tableau Server, with different pricing and instance options public. However, users may have less control over the deployment process than over self-deployment.

Users should evaluate their specific needs and expertise when selecting a deployment option. Self-deployment provides the most significant control and customisation, while Quick Start and AWS Marketplace deployment offer simplified and quick deployment options.

We all boarded after breakfast from Edapally into the buses waiting as planned. Our journey to Munnar resembled the long-lost college trips, filled with songs, dances and ‘Antaksharis’. Finally, we reached our destination passing vast expanses of tea estates and dewy mountains. Munnar is an exotic place with a breath-taking landscape and scenic spots. The chilly hill station stole our minds with its exotic flora and fauna. Our team stayed in a luxury resort: Mountain Club. The cottages chosen for us resembled the colonial architecture from the bygone era. The bedrooms were cosy, with a balcony open to the rustic surroundings. The lunch was a luxurious affair that included starters to desserts. We used the mealtime to get to know more about each other. Then, we all attended the motivation speech by Sibu Varghese which was quite insightful, followed by an interactive session. Then, we interacted with and introduced each other. Personal interaction creates tight bonds and has an integral role in team building. We all broke the ice by sharing our stories and telling jokes. It was fun to get to know each other. In the evening, we had a wild-theme based gala party, and all got dressed up in sync with the theme, ‘Just Go Wild’. It was fun to watch everyone from the Manager to the employees dressed up in the same theme. We had an exhilarating DJ party manned by Darryl Gaulbert which made us all shake a leg to the tune. We danced and roared to the music. It was indeed wild! The following day after breakfast, we met our founder Indumon Das, who had a chat with us regarding the journey of Beinex and his vision. It inspired us all to have a dream and pursue it fearlessly. Some of us accessed the infinity pool late afternoon and had great fun swimming and playing pool ball. It was a blissful evening based on an ethnic wear theme. We competed for the best ethnic outfit of the evening. The different hues and styles made the evening stunning. Everyone flaunted the traditional wear in style. We had a musical evening with a live barbeque and a sumptuous dinner. Finally, the day of leaving Munnar dawned; March 19. We all had breakfast in the morning and packed our backpacks. Most of us were pretty reluctant to leave Munnar as we were not ready to lose the bond we created together. Nonetheless, we vowed to stay connected. We boarded the buses around 10 AM and waved goodbye to Munnar. When we reached Edapally in the evening, a surprise goody bag was waiting. It was an impressive and admirable gesture from our firm. Beinex has a culture of nurturing growth and spreading positivity, and employees’ comfort is the priority here. Yes, we had a fantastic time together. After this retreat, our rejuvenated and motivated minds are ready to bounce back to work with enhanced spirit. We are looking forward to more team building sessions in the future to meet each other more often.

After two very long masked years, the world has slowly started to breathe, again! With lockdowns on and work taking place from the very room you had slept a couple of hours back -- the human universe has been phenomenally re-engineered by a microscopic organism. Your geographical location has been made immaterial in the digital world. But the same cannot be said about data, and this may sound paradoxical and ironic. For instance, an MNC’s location of the data now matters more than ever before. With a major chunk of data of many entities, especially government ones, on the public cloud, the airing of concerns related to data security, data sovereignty, data localisation/ data residency is growing louder in decibel terms.

This is where Hyperforce comes in.

Hyperforce is how Salesforce has reimagined its platform. It is now horizontally scalable, and through tie-ups with major cloud providers, the scalability has grown by leaps and bounds. Imagine you are a B2B company with 10,000 customers or a B2C company with tens of millions of customers: Hyperforce lets you scale up your capabilities and provides you with a single source of truth. But what if you are a multi-geographic business conglomerate in a heavily regulated industry like finance or health? How will you comply with data sovereignty, data localisation/ data residency requirements? Hyperforce’s collaboration with public cloud companies ensures that the data can be located at any specified place in the world, adhering to the local rules of data governance and storage locations. “Choose the location where your data will be stored to comply with regulations specific to your company, region, or industry — even in highly regulated industries like the public sector,” the store-data-locally-keep-it-compliant-globally mantra tells. Other features Hyperscalable: Hyperforce also enables you to scale the infrastructure as per the needs of the business by letting you access extra computing capacity as and when required. You can employ resources in the public cloud rather quickly. Yes, it is your decision whether to scale up or not, and the elasticity can be dictated by the nature of your requirements. Hypersecure: Also, trust is built-in, which puts security at the forefront of the architecture. Data privacy and security are sacrosanct. This leaves you with enough room to focus on innovation. Hypercompatible: And most important of all, backward compatibility ensures that all the extant Salesforce apps, customisations and integrations will continue to work on Hyperforce regardless of cloud. In the physical world, your geographical location assumes importance. But in the digital world, it is the location of the data that matters. Hyperforce, by virtue of its collaboration with major players in the cloud domain, ensures data residency requirements are adhered to when and where needed. The architecture is hyper-scalable, secure, and comes with backward compatibility. Hyperforce is soon to be launched in the UAE, and Beinex, a Salesforce partner, is all set to carry out implementation and consulting of and for Hyperforce.