IDEA vs PowerBI, Python, or R

Hi eb,

That is an interesting question as there are some overlap among the various program.  Wikipedia defines Power BI as:

Power BI is a business analytics service by Microsoft. It aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards.

Where as IDEA is defined as the following:

IDEA® is a powerful data analysis tool designed to help auditors, accountants and other finance professionals perform data analysis quickly to help improve audits and identify control breakdowns.

Unfortunately I don't know what business you are in so I can't make suggestions on how the different software can relate to your industry.  I have been using IDEA for 30 years, I have used it in Audit, Internal Audit and I am currently using it within the finance department of one of the larger departments within the Canadian government.  I also use Power BI where I work as the software is complementary.  I perform the analysis using IDEA and then there are tools that allow you to connect Power BI directly to IDEA to generate the visualizations.  Power BI is a visualization tool that can do analysis, IDEA was created and focuses on performing financial analytics.  

Python and R are programming languages so there is a need to learn the language to perform anything.  As of version 10.3 of IDEA it can not run scripts created in Python.  So in short IDEA can be combined with both Python and Power BI to enhance your backend (python through the creation of specialized scripts) and the visualizations through Power BI.

Let me know what industry you are in and hopefully we can have a discussion on this.

Brian

Thanks for replying, Brian!
 
The business is in manufacturing & distribution, but we audit all the usual support functions (Accounting, IT, etc.).  I wouldn't think the focus of our audits vary that much from others.
 
Power BI doesn't just do one part of analytics in visualizations.  I used Access a ton before.  I did briefly use IDEA & even gave a presentation on it, but I quit using it due to Access seeming to do everything IDEA did (I used SQL Server for bigger recordsets).  With Power BI though, I am finding it does everything Access did - except for the Forms piece.  For that, PowerApps seems to be the replacement.  So, Power BI seems to cover us for what I've ever done in analytics, and it's free for us.
 
So, I was hoping to maybe be pointed to a resource on specifics of what all IDEA does to determine if there's a business case for both keeping it & investing time in learning it.  I am sure my little use of IDEA would not have exposed me to everything that has made it so popular among auditors.  I've heard of predesigned IDEA routines - where does one get those?
 
Thanks so much!
 
Eric

Hi Eric,

The two biggest are data integrity and reperformance.  IDEA was created as an auditing tool and the functionality is geared towards auditors, where as Power BI was not.  One of the biggest items is data integrity, once you import information into IDEA that information cannot be changed, unlike any of the other softwares that you have mentioned.  Generally from an auditing point of view this should be a big one.  As an auditor you import the data into IDEA, do a reconciliation to make sure the data reconciles with the source system and you are ready to go, there are no more fears about the data intentionally or accidentally getting changed.  

The other big one is reperformance or the recording of all the steps that were performed to obtain the results.  You need this one in order for the manager to sign-off on the audit steps that the work was properly supervised.  Also if there are ever any questions or concerns about the audit work you have a complete trail of everything that was done and could walk someone through the logic and steps of how you obtain the conclusion.  In the project overview there is ways to see it at a high level and see how the different files relate together.  Another thing is that the history creates an IDEAScript so it becomes simple to save the script and reperform the steps in the future, such as if you are doing monthly analysis on the payroll.  Where I work I have created scripts that took something that took over three days to perform in Excel and I do the same thing in IDEA in under five minutes, so we now get more time to actually analyze the data instead of cleaning it up and making sure it is complete.  Actually I am proud of this one as I have won several awards for this work, thanks to IDEA!!

Of course there are auditing routines built in, such as Benford's analysis that are not built into other software.

If you check out the SmartAnalyzer section of IDEA it can connect you to the marketplace (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m6DWDlOZLA).  I know there are a large number of apps in the pipeline for this and that more is to come.

So the big one for me as an ex-auditor is that IDEA was developed for auditors and has controls in place to safeguard and track what is done to the data while the other apps do not.

Brian

Hi Eric,

I spoke with a friend of mine yesterday, Sunder Gee, he is an expert in the field and a regular speaker at some of the larger conferences.  He has written Fraud and Fraud Detection: A Data Analytics Approach  which I highly recommened, most of the examples in the book are geared toward IDEA.  He kindly shared a presentation that he has given on data analytics software that I attached below.  I would recommend having a look at it as it might answer some of your questions.  He also shared a link to a presentation by the IIA - Translating Numbers into Visualization that might also help you out.

Brian

Thank you so much.  I will check out some of these resources and report back!