But makers of auditing software contend that any auditor using a spreadsheet is missing a trick. "As with other office suite tools, there's a tendency to think of spreadsheets as free," says Pamela Eichhorst, a marketing manager for Hyperion, which specializes in business analysis software. As Eichhorst sees it, companies often underestimate the maintenance cost and training needed with spreadsheets, while overestimating the quality of information found in them. "They just keep rolling it out," she says.

They also keep rolling out in-house software. The IIA survey revealed that home-grown audit solutions are becoming increasingly popular. In fact, the overall proportion of corporations developing their own programs internally has nearly doubled over the past over the past year or so, notes the IIA.

Non-Stop Audit
This is not to say that audit software, whether off-the-shelf or inernally built, is perfect. Many auditors say it can be difficult keeping current with software upgrades in other departments. Noted the IIA study: "Remarks concerning the audit staff's ability to 'effectively audit the auditee's changing technology environment' were far more common than those relating to software within the audit department itself."

Sticker shock is another concern. While the size and scope of internal audit departments can vary enormously, ACL reckons that its large corporate clients — that is, those with 100 or more auditors — invest initially on average of $80,000 in audit technologies, with $20,000 being spent annually for additional tools, consulting and training.

Still, the IIA notes that most of the auditors in its survey said they plan to increase their software usage over the next three to five years. The area that will receive the most investment is data extraction and analysis, along with network security assessment.

That doesn't surprise Le Grand of the IIA. "Auditors have been using software for data analysis and other sorts of auditing for a long time," he says. "But now we're finding that auditors are able to get much closer to the source of a problem and move towards continuous auditing using real-time information."

And this is just the beginning, he says. He believes demand for timely, accurate data is sure to escalate as other parts of the company begin working in real time. Adds Oracle's Gregory: "In previous decades, when labor was cheaper, auditors would spend a long time sifting through data. Companies just don't have that luxury anymore."

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