Data mining, text mining and their business applications

The auditing profession is suffering a credibility crisis in the eyes of the public due to the high profile collapses of many large companies and indeed one of the largest accounting firms in the world, amid fraud and professional breaches. Regulators are strengthening requirements and the auditing profession is once again working towards ¿educating¿ the public about what they should be expecting from the auditors. A revolution is seen to be necessary whereby external auditors, via the support of regulators, apply data mining techniques to improved financial reporting requirements in the context of electronic data collection. The public would be provided with more of their expectations including better predictions of fraud, errors and company failures.