Auditor’s Guide to Information Systems Auditing

Chapter 19. Impact of Information Technology on the Business Processes and Solutions

This chapter examines the impact of Information Technology (IT) on the business processes and solutions, business process outsourcing (BPO), and applications of e-business issues and trends.

Impact

In recent years, IT has changed with the business world as well as the rules and conditions under which business is transacted. The introduction of concepts such as globalization, e-Commerce, Internet technology, and the rapid changes in global market demographics have made flexibility and reliability survival attributes of the corporation. External opportunities and threats, including economic, social, and cultural, may dramatically change the organization’s need for processing information in the future.

Given that the basic tenet of strategy formulation is to take advantage of external opportunities while avoiding or reducing the impact of external threats, revisiting business processes in order to make best use of corporate information becomes a survival issue. Accordingly, auditors and accountants must be fully up to date on how technology impacts their business, their industry and related industries, the legal and regulatory environment, and their profession.

The appropriate uses of IT impact management strategies as well as the roles and relationships within organizations, the skills, tools, and methods of implementing strategies, and the cost structures. These, in turn, invoke new rules for competitive ...