As a warm-up for Process Mining Camp, we asked some of the speakers for an up-front interview. Previously, we already spoke with Tijn van Heijden, Walter Vanherle, and Lalit Wangikar. Today, you can read the fireside chat with our fourth practice speaker Youri Soons below.
Youri Soons has been working as an IT auditor for the Dutch National Auditing Service for more than 5 years. Currently, Youri is establishing process mining as a regular auditing tool within the institution.
At camp, you will get his perspective on how process mining helps to gain more assurance.
Interview with Youri
Anne: Can you still remember where and when you first heard about process mining? What exactly caught your attention and fascinated you about the topic?
Youri: That was about four years ago, during a presentation of a colleague IT auditor of the Ministry of Infrastructure & Environment. What fascinated me was that with a push of the button it will gain insight into the full mass. This makes it possible to find all the abnormalities in a process, but also derives a lot assurance from the data.
Anne: Right! How would you explain the concept of assurance to a non-auditor? And how does process mining help in gaining more assurance?
Youri: As auditor we are asked to provide assurance about the functioning of a process. For example, because it is required by law or because the customer wants to get a certain degree of assurance on the functioning of his process. It is then up to us to conduct an audit and determine whether we are able to provide that degree of assurance.
Process mining is, moreover, not the means by which you can provide assurance, you have to see it as a tool to provide the required assurance in a more efficient way. It is also not to say that we deliver more assurance than before.
Process mining provides insight on how the process is handled, by whom and when, but still says nothing about the correctness of decisions. You have to combine the results of process mining in a smart way with other research methods.
So, for example, we can determine whether steps are skipped or segregation of duties is broken. As a result, we are able to focus at the files of these exceptions.
Anne: Interesting, so what you are saying is that process mining helps you to see what is going right, and then to only focus on the exceptions?
Youri: That’s right. We always submit the results of the analyses against the intended process. Deviations may in fact mean that incorrect decisions are made. For example, that a subsidy is granted unfairly. And then we are just looking to those files.
Anne: Can you give us a sneak preview of what you will talk about at camp?
Youri: Providing assurance is tied to a number of conditions. I will show how we think you can efficiently deploy process mining in an assurance-based audit approach.
Anne: Thanks, Youri! We are really curious about your presentation!
Would you like to hear more from Youri about his experiences? Are you interested in sharing first-hand knowledge with fellow process miners? Register now to reserve your seat at Process Mining Camp on 28 May in Eindhoven. We only have a strictly limited number of tickets, and they are going fast…
Anne Rozinat
Market, customers, and everything else
Anne knows how to mine a process like no other. She has conducted a large number of process mining projects with companies such as Philips Healthcare, Océ, ASML, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, and many others.
info@fluxicon.com