It was years ago and I was at my desk when a group of visitors to the bank happened by on a tour. I didn’t know them, but they apparently knew me by reputation. One gent asked me, “How do I find technical talent like you? ” I was flattered, thought for a moment and said look for the guy with the Excel Bible on his desk. Some years later I heard there was a discussion on the need to cultivate technical people. My colleague and I were being used as examples. The definition of technical at that point seemed to include going beyond excel and the ability to query large databases (a.k.a. big data).
As an ex auditor I can attest Microsoft Excel and Access prowess can yield some amazing results. I can also tell you that too many auditors do not have the baseline skills that are needed today. All to often shortcuts are taken and tests are not performed because the auditor lacked “automation instincts”. Oh I’m not advocating that the auditor should be able to query every source system, rather I suggest that they should have a personal toolset that includes Microsoft Access. Why? Because Access is good at teaching about tables, fields, indexes and SQL.
(Excel vs Access)
George is auditing in a new shop and the audit data analytics guys don’t have system access. To move things along George asks for a download sample of three days activity. He soon learns each day has between 1.2 and 1.5 million transactions. The developer provided thirty four key columns. As we all know the last few versions of Excel have 1,048,576 rows.
With some help George creates three Excel workbooks with the data split into 2 sheets. I can tell you while Excel may have a million row, things go very wrong when you overload Excel. For one thing, Excel has filtering limits. I’ve been amazed to see people use this approach. It simply isnt the way to go.
George is stuck and thinks what do I do now? There are any number of tools that George could use to get out of this mess. Why not use the one that came with MS Office installed on his laptop. Yes good old MS Access.
In another version of this hypothetical George dumps the files into access, adds a primary key, some indexes on key fields and not only executes his tests he comes up with some additional testing that reveal some interesting findings.
Building MS Excel and Access Technical Prowess
All this begs an interesting question: Can you cultivate technology talent and build that MS Excel and Access Technical Prowess without spending a fortune on training? I believe the answer is yes and here is how.
♦ Create a technology friendly environment.
♦ 100% testing using automation will likely take longer, provide for ample time.
♦ Have technology be a portion of the annual review process.
♦ Reward the use of technology that yielded results.
♦ Showcase examples of effective uses of technology.
There is one way to absolutely not get that innovative enviroment you are looking for and that is to manadate it. Better to apply a friendly positive nudge. Perhaps suggest they read my blog post:
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