Bill Mew, our principle consultant, comments on the use of AI and smart analytics to combat procurement fraud. More common than bribery, corruption and cybercrime, procurement fraud is widespread in the UK and the country lags behind many countries in its detection capabilities, new research from SAS reveals. British companies, on average, lose significantly more money to procurement fraud, and the country is far more reliant on ineffective manual detection techniques than other nations – with 40% of UK firms hit each year for between €150,000 and €400,000.
Intelligence needs to be applied across all three elements of any transaction: tracking the goods moving in one direction, the payment moving in the opposite direction, and data moving in both directions. Prompted by GDPR and regulations around bribery and anti-money laundering, firms have been seeking to get a better handle on their data and payments – given the volume of transactions, the smart ones have adopted artificial intelligence (AI) to sift through them all efficiently. The ‘Cinderella’ element in the equation has always been the tracking of goods where few organisations have adopted a smart approach to logistics and inventory.
The really smart approach though, is to be able to apply AI across all three. With audit resources limited, there is a real need to be able to easily and accurately spot anomalies in the flow of goods, payments or data. AI-enabled big data analysis across all three can provide quicker and more accurate identification of potential issues for further investigation. At some point in the future, we will look back and wonder why we didn’t always do it this way.
Further detail can be found in the full report which is available . SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.
