Exploring the Integration of AI in the Internal Audit Landscape with Protiviti
Eric Groen, managing director of internal audit and advisory and AuditBoard partner lead at Protiviti, joins the conversation during AuditBoard's Audit & Beyond event in San Diego. This insightful session, hosted by Rebecca Knight from SiliconANGLE Media and Rob Strechay, director/principal analyst at theCUBE Research, delves into the evolving partnership between Protiviti and AuditBoard and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the internal audit sector.
In this video, Groen discusses their extensive journey with AuditBoard, highlighting Protiviti's role as a diamond sponsor. The conversation concentrates on how the integration of AI and innovative technologies revolutionizes traditional auditing processes, effectively reducing time spent on routine tasks and enhancing the quality and efficiency of audits. Groen also touches on the challenges and resistance organizations face when adopting AI solutions, underscoring the importance of changing mindsets and behaviors.
Key takeaways from the discussion include Groen's insights into the efficiencies gained through AI, which streamline audit processes and foster consistency in results. They emphasize the growing need for organizations to adapt to evolving technologies and the expected acceleration in the pace of work. This collaboration aims to empower organizations by strengthening their risk management abilities, helping them navigate complex audit environments with ease, according to Groen and the analysts.
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Eric Groen, Protiviti
Exploring the Integration of AI in the Internal Audit Landscape with Protiviti
Eric Groen, managing director of internal audit and advisory and AuditBoard partner lead at Protiviti, joins the conversation during AuditBoard's Audit & Beyond event in San Diego. This insightful session, hosted by Rebecca Knight from SiliconANGLE Media and Rob Strechay, director/principal analyst at theCUBE Research, delves into the evolving partnership between Protiviti and AuditBoard and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the internal audit sector.
In this video, Groen discusses their extensive journey with AuditBoard, highlighting Protiviti's role as a diamond sponsor. The conversation concentrates on how the integration of AI and innovative technologies revolutionizes traditional auditing processes, effectively reducing time spent on routine tasks and enhancing the quality and efficiency of audits. Groen also touches on the challenges and resistance organizations face when adopting AI solutions, underscoring the importance of changing mindsets and behaviors.
Key takeaways from the discussion include Groen's insights into the efficiencies gained through AI, which streamline audit processes and foster consistency in results. They emphasize the growing need for organizations to adapt to evolving technologies and the expected acceleration in the pace of work. This collaboration aims to empower organizations by strengthening their risk management abilities, helping them navigate complex audit environments with ease, according to Groen and the analysts.
ProtivitiManaging Director - Internal Audit and Advisory & AuditBoard Partner Lead
In this Audit & Beyond interview, Eric Groen, managing director of internal audit & advisory and AuditBoard partner lead at Protiviti, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay and Rebecca Knight to unpack how Protiviti and AuditBoard are deepening their alliance around AI and ecosystem integration. Groen traces the partnership’s evolution from SOXHUB to today’s AuditBoard platform – highlighting Protiviti’s role as a long-standing, Diamond-level sponsor – and explains how co-developed solutions keep users “in-platform,” driving repeatability, consistency and time savings...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is the current challenge organizations are facing regarding risk silos?add
What is the nature of the partnership between Protiviti and AuditBoard, and how is it addressing current challenges faced by organizations in risk management?add
What impact does the use of AI agents have on the efficiency and quality of work in organizations, particularly in relation to audit professionals?add
>> Good evening everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of AuditBoard's Audit & beyond here in San Diego. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside Rob Strechay, my co-host and analyst. This is the home stretch, Rob. We've saved the best for last.
Rob Strechay
>> I think, again, just looking at all the partnerships and what's going on and just the energy that's been here before everybody's out at the party drinking, it was great. And I think, again, this is a lot of fun.
Rebecca Knight
>> It is. It's been a great day, a really great day of great content, great conversations. With that, I would like to welcome our last guest of the day, Eric Groen, Managing Director, Internal Audit and Advisory and AuditBoard Partner Lead, Protiviti. Welcome, Eric.
Eric Groen
>> Yeah, thank you. Just for the record, I'm skipping our happy hour to be here with you.
Rebecca Knight
>> We'll get you a plaque for after this.
Eric Groen
>> I appreciate that.
Rebecca Knight
>> Don't worry.
Rob Strechay
>> We'll try to make you happy for the next 15 or so minutes.
Rebecca Knight
>> Okay.
Eric Groen
>> That sounds good.
Rebecca Knight
>> So Protiviti and AuditBoard are deepening their alliance with a focus on AI and ecosystem integration. What are you seeing right now in terms of this risk silo today that so many organizations are really struggling with and wrestling with? How is this new joint venture solving their problems?
Eric Groen
>> Yeah, we're really excited to be partnering with AuditBoard. We're one of their longest standing partner. In fact, we were one of their first partners when they were just socks up, right? Going from SOXHUB and now to AuditBoard, it's been an incredible journey. This is their seventh conference. I've been at all seven.
Rob Strechay
>> Wow.
Eric Groen
>> So I'm one of the originals. I remember when the first conference was at the Terranea and we had just a few hundred folks, now all the way to record numbers of folks here and capacity. Protiviti is very excited to be the Diamond sponsor. We've been, like I said, a sponsor every year that we've had this and we're excited to be here. As far as the integrations and the kinds of things that we're developing with them, AuditBoard has been super generous to us to really give us the access that we need in order to build some of these solutions. So a lot of these solutions we're building and then we're able to apply it to the AuditBoard platform. That way, our customers don't necessarily have to go outside the platform. They can stay in the platform, they can use the platform, and really help them to save time.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I think everybody here, obviously the buzz around AI and AI tools has just been off to charts, and it can really be a game changer for a lot of organizations. Help us understand the before and the after, and specifically how the AI agents are really helping change the game and to take the toil out of these efforts for organizations.
Eric Groen
>> Yeah, it's a good question. So a couple of things. I think AI is really helping with quality. So first of all, starting with quality. One thing that's great about audit though and audit professionals is we've always had a really high level of quality. So that doesn't change. What I think does change is the amount of time that it takes to do things. And so we're going to probably talk a lot about time in this interview, and what I think is exciting is as people are spending less time doing more daily tasks, I think they should be asking themselves, not about the daily tasks that they're doing, but how can I do my daily task with AI, and do it more efficiently and with higher quality?
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, and just building on that, I think that people also, there's a lot that is in the ERP systems of these organizations from a SOX perspective and an audit perspective. How are you looking at it beyond just data retrieval and how are you looking at really being able to readily use that inside of AuditBoard to enable full population testing and some of the other things that organizations are trying to do with it?
Eric Groen
>> So, so much of the amount of time that it takes to execute some of this testing to build some of these scripts is about time. And so to do it over and over and over again, that time adds up.
Rob Strechay
>> So to make it repeatable.
Eric Groen
>> To make it repeatable, that's exactly right.
Rob Strechay
>> You guys are coming in and helping them really take that toil out, making it repeatable.
Eric Groen
>> That's right. And you're getting the same thing every time. So there's also a bit of consistency, a lot of consistency that comes with having these tools built into the system. I also think it's important that when we talk about integrations, we are bringing the information to the user. We are bringing it. They don't have to go out into the ERP, they don't have to go out, maybe even to AuditBoard. They can stay in the different types of solutions that they're already using. They can stay in the environments they're using. And that information is coming directly to them.
Rebecca Knight
>> What kinds of resistance or concerns are you hearing from audit leaders about the use of AI? As you said, it should be taking care of all those boring, tedious tasks that they don't like doing probably, but there is still some resistance. Can you talk a little bit about you're hearing?
Eric Groen
>> Well, first of all, people don't like change.
Rebecca Knight
>> That is true.
Eric Groen
>> Let's be honest, people don't like change. But I think the second thing is there's a little bit of fear, a little bit of fear of the unknown. Again, auditors typically have a lot of quality processes built into their methodology and into the things that they do on a regular basis. One of the things I think audit professionals are really good at is, and things that we always talk about is, what's our budget for this? How much time are we going to executing this test? How much time do I have for this audit? When is the deadline for this? Those types of questions. AI really turns that on its head and instead asks you, don't just talk about or tell me how long this is going to take, but tell me what you're going to do that you've never done before. And that's hard. That's really hard.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I think that really plays off of something you mentioned a minute ago about the immediate and measurable value, right? Bringing fast values. Because everybody gets excited when you can see, it's like, "Oh, I did this and look at this. I don't have to go redo this every quarter with SOX."
Eric Groen
>> That's right.
Rob Strechay
>> And everything like that. Especially when you're a company that may, as Raul was talking about, going from being private to being public and it's like, "Hey, now this is the wedding. Now this is the marriage and I got to do this every quarter."
Eric Groen
>> Yeah, yeah.
Rob Strechay
>> What are you seeing as the one or two tangible metrics that organizations should expect when they become joint customers of you guys and AuditBoard?
Eric Groen
>> Well, again, when we talk about efficiency and we're thinking about what it means to be more efficient, almost every time we're talking about building an agent or we're asking our clients or we're talking about use cases, we're asking them to essentially measure the time and the value that those particular tasks are providing to, and those can be uncomfortable conversations. And sometimes they might not know the answer. And so as we think about what are the agents that we want to build, what has the highest value, what saves the most risk, those really begin to think about, what can we do next and what is next? And whether it's, take for example, an auditor that used to do 10 audits a year, now maybe we can do 20 audits a year. Or if we are doing those 10 audits or we're going to stick to these 10 audits, how many more samples can we test? How big of a sample can we test? What are we going to look at? The other thing that's interesting though is the more you dig, sometimes the more you find.
Rob Strechay
>> Right.
Eric Groen
>> And so even if AI does help us to solve a lot of problems, I think AI also creates some problems.
Rebecca Knight
>> Well, it'll uncover a lot of issues.
Eric Groen
>> That's right. You start to find things and you start to ask more questions.
Rob Strechay
>> But those problems are actually opportunities, right?
>> That's the engine of growth that we've been talking about risk and audit can become. I want to go back to something you were talking about earlier, which is that change is hard. And so a lot of what you're talking about in working with the clients and customers that Protiviti is doing, it's about changing mindsets, changing behaviors. So how do you go about that? Because as you said, people are used to a certain way of doing things, and AI is really changing the dynamic for a lot of people in terms of how they show up and do their job. So how are you taking their hand and saying, "Come with us on this journey"?
Eric Groen
>> Yeah. So in the same scenario in which we just talked about, "Hey, instead of doing 10 audits, we're going to do 20 audits," I also think in many situations, they're still going to do the 10 audits, but what are we also going to ask them to do? We're probably going to ask them to learn new skills. Instead of just doing an audit, well, maybe now it's going to be a compliance test. Instead of just doing audit and compliance, maybe we're going to do more risk assessments. We're going to get more into the ERM area. And so you were talking earlier about breaking down silos. We're going to have more time to look at different things and to build our skills. And so one of the things that I often ask, and even the people that I work with, my teammates, is if we have extra time, how would we use it? What are the things that we're going to do? Whether that's upskilling, whether that's more training, whether that's something new, whether that's innovating. Let's figure out what it is that we're going to be able to do that's new and let's try it and let's go for it.
Rob Strechay
>> So when you look at it from Protiviti works across a whole bunch of different industries and in a lot of different solutions, solution areas, when you look at the way things are changing, how are you talking to your joint customers about just the velocity of change? To me, you talked about time. I look at it time over target. Sometimes that's a moving target right now and there's not a lot of time. What are those conversations like with those customers?
Eric Groen
>> Well, I do think that they can be uncomfortable, and they're also uncomfortable from the standpoint of they're asking us, their service provider, how much faster can you do this? So their expectations of us as a service provider have also increased. And if we took 10 hours to do something last year, the automatic expectation is that it should take less time this year. And so, again, one of the things that we're good at in audit is looking at our budgets. We're looking at how much time we have available. We look at the number of things that we expect to accomplish with that time and often equate that to dollars. Well, now we've got an even larger bogey to go get, right? We've got even more tests that we might need to do. And it's a perpetual exciting way to think about it.
Rebecca Knight
>> So Eric, looking ahead, when you are here, we're all sitting together for the eighth AuditBoard.
Eric Groen
>> Yes.
Rebecca Knight
>> The AuditBoard OG, we've already established that. What do you see we'll be talking about then in terms of this alliance between Protiviti and AuditBoard? What do you want to be able to say a year from now about the deepening of this relationship?
Eric Groen
>> Every year is so different. You're absolutely right. I remember last year, there was lots of conversation about some of the things that they were rolling out. Last year, I remember we were just talking about AI, just the first set of things that there are. Now, there's tons of AI that's already in there. So this year, one of the examples that I was really excited about was the one in which they're talking about how to do some planning and scenario analysis. Never talked about that last year. One of the things that they immediately talked about as a scenario planning type situation was the tariffs. Who would have thought that a year ago we would be talking about tariffs? I know a number of people that are in our industry that are building all these models to deal with tariffs, something that we maybe would not have considered. I remember in the pandemic, people talked about doing risk assessments that said, who had pandemic risk in their risk assessment? And one of the things that I have heard from people, actually, a really smart board member that I respect, was they said, "Just because pandemic risk or just because tariffs wasn't in your risk assessment, or in your scenario planning, a year ago doesn't mean that we don't know how to deal with it because we're better at risk management. Risk management is a muscle. The more that you practice, the more that you exercise that muscle, the better off you'll be no matter what that next topic is." So I'm not a futurist. I'm not a theorist. I don't know what the next topic is. But I do know that with better risk management practices, with better tools, with more efficient, with more time, we'll be able to handle whatever heads our way.
Rebecca Knight
>> And Protiviti and AuditBoard together will help organizations build that muscle, as you were saying.
Eric Groen
>> That's right.
Rebecca Knight
>> Exactly.
Eric Groen
>> That's right. The more we can standardize it, the more that we can have everyone into one tool and really working and collaborating, the better off we're going to be.
Rebecca Knight
>> Well, Eric, I've got good news for you. You can go to happy hour now.
Eric Groen
>> Yes. That's awesome.
Rebecca Knight
>> This was a terrific conversation. Thank you so much for coming on.
Rob Strechay
>> Yes. Thank you.
Eric Groen
>> Appreciate that.
Rebecca Knight
>> Yeah, Rob, and it's been a great day, and I would love-
Rob Strechay
>> It's been fantastic....
Rebecca Knight
>> to thank our fantastic crew, and Tony, and Frank, and Andrew, and Ken, and Alex. Thank you. And everyone, it's been a really fun day.
Rob Strechay
>> It's been great. And to the AuditBoard team, thank you.
Rebecca Knight
>> Yes, exactly.
Rob Strechay
>> Thank you very much.
Rebecca Knight
>> A really great day. Excellent. I'm Rebecca Knight, for Rob Strechay. This wraps up theCUBE's live coverage of AuditBoard's Audit & Beyond. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.
Rebecca Knight
Rob Strechay