Custom Industry Analytics through Collaborative Innovations | BDO

Company Background

 A large global SaaS business that offers education software required an audit. To fulfill its compliance obligations, it turned to BDO.

Client Challenges

As part of the audit, BDO had to test revenue numbers, which required the client to spend hours manually pulling 120 samples.
In relying on testing a selection of random samples, the test did not yield the deep insights that could be drawn from full population testing.
As a result, significant time and labor went into the audit process without producing deep insights.

BDO’s Solution   

BDO’s engagement team knew there was a better way to test the revenue balances. They created a custom analytic in collaboration with our data analytics professionals that would save client resources while extracting more value from the test.
The analytics team designed a risk assessment analytic, allowing the engagement team to drill into individual contracts and types of contracts. Then they created a custom analytic to test all the applicable data by recalculating the revenue amount for each contract based on relevant criteria.
BDO piloted this tool with the SaaS client’s audit. Once BDO and the client saw the value this analytic brought to the audit process, it made the tool available to all SaaS clients.

Company Benefits

The client was able to reduce their time spent pulling sample support for the test by 93%.
Using complete data sets allowed for a deep and thorough analysis of revenue streams and trends, and a comprehensive risk assessment of the full population.
BDO’s investment in collaborative innovation empowers our auditors to create custom industry analytics that provide a tailored audit experience with deeper business insights.