Queen of Tech - With her smarts for audit technology and automation, Bidvest’s Lauren Berrington is lauded as the woman behind ALICE™. She’s only just hit her stride.
Lauren Berrington CA(SA) joins me virtually from the back porch of her house and we make small talk before easing into the conversation. She’s self-effacing, which is the very antithesis of a decorated, jet-setting executive. Also, her aversion to publicity is evident.
Sage Lauren isn’t altogether anti-interviews alright, although she appreciates the kind of rigour expected from auditors in the habit of giving press interviews. The almost puritan streak in Lauren harks back to a time when auditors went about their day oblivious to advertising their services, a time when constellations of great accountants frowned upon publicity and any efforts aimed at attracting media attention.
Ten years ago, when she was a SAICA Top 35-under-35 finalist, Lauren was recruited to transform what was then an almost redundant internal audit function that did not have the respect of management.
A lot has happened, she says, adding that the past decade was nothing short of a terrific roller coaster.
She picks up the story: ‘The reason I think I was a finalist had to do with attracting the right calibre of talent, the upliftment of skill set and mindset and transformation of the function into a value-adding one – commanding the respect of very capable management.’
The Top 35-under-35 competition was a real game changer, she says. Outside of the competition, she commends SAICA for the subsequent exposure. ‘For me, the biggest thing was that someone believed in what we were doing and encouraged us to push forward and navigate this unchartered territory − despite most audit experts telling us that we were swimming upstream and should quit before we drown,’ she says.
‘That vote of confidence counted more than imaginable. That was the biggest change. From there it was the exposure: what SAICA does, and what SAICA represents. To be part of that community has been amazing.’
She joined Bidvest in May 2012 as chief audit executive. In 2016, following attendance at the Bidvest technology conference, she started reflecting on the potential of AI, data analytics, digital transformation, and automation in the assurance space. ALICE™ has been the culmination of years of experiential wisdom and hard work.
‘We worked hard at setting up internal audit teams that subscribed to the high-performing culture of Bidvest. We wanted to serve Bidvest with excellence as a trusted advisor and problem solver. Our ways of work were client-centric and solution minded. Quality and independence were in our DNA, and we strived for efficiency and efficacy. And what happened then was that we couldn’t scale.’
The beginning of ALICE
Suddenly management required more of the function’s services, particularly IT-related ones, than what they could deliver with just humans.
So we had to augment our human capacity with digital effort and created a digital auditor – fondly referred to as ALICE™. Introducing technology into our function allowed us to create a digital version of ourselves and our capabilities – allowing us to scale and perform our work in a continuous and near real-time manner.
‘In 2016, when the concept of our digital auditor and “audit-as-a-service” offerings were introduced, we were told by many people within the audit fraternity that this is a science fiction exercise and that we should give up. Not giving up was the most exciting yet daunting challenge in our careers.’
ALICE™ is a next-generation digital auditor with cognitive skills and data transformation capabilities. The disruptive and scalable technology has come in for a loud endorsement from various quarters, including robotic process automation software giants and technology players. Press search also shows that the technology is built to enable assurance professionals to focus on higher-level tasks that need human intelligence, while it drives an automated process to govern, manage, and monitor businesses.
‘Deploying ALICE™ to do audits across Bidvest for the first time was a milestone,’ says Lauren. ‘It was certainly a highlight when ALICE™ actually worked despite the diversity and complexity of the different Bidvest environments.’
And she was received with an interesting response. ‘At first people didn’t believe that ALICE™ was right. So we had to plug her in and let her do the audits in a digital manner, but we had to do the audits in a manual manner in parallel and then compare the results to show them that our digital auditor was indeed producing accurate results.’
Another highlight was when UiPath reached out for ALICE’s™ services, she says. ‘UiPath is arguably one of the fastest-growing and leading robotic processing companies in the world. They specialise in robotics and the mere fact that they asked ALICE™, our audit robot, to come and do an audit for them in their robotic environment was a proud moment for us.’
Her dynamic team
‘The biggest highlight for me was and will always be my team. Without them, there would be no story. They are everything to me. By far, the biggest driver behind creating ALICE™ was to give my high-performing and exceptionally talented team an opportunity to pioneer the future of assurance instead of being disrupted by it. They had run out of runway in the traditional internal audit role and needed the platform to rise to the next level in their careers.’
Although specialising as an IT auditor, ALICE™ has proved quite versatile, playing a number of roles, including financial auditor, compliance auditor, regulatory auditor, and operational auditor.
’While it’s been exciting and exhilarating and has brought so much reward, you’ve had to persevere, you’ve had to have grit, you’ve had to really just push through boundaries that you thought you could never break to get it right,’ she says.
Starting out as an auditor at PwC, she was part of the systems and processes group which explored the role of technology in audits. While she continues to grab headlines on account of her work on ALICE™, Lauren is also an untiring advocate of making a difference in the community. The ALICE™ team at Bidvest is now offering internship opportunities, giving back to a community of graduates who could use the training.
Advice for Top 35 finalists
Her advice for SAICA Top 35-under-35 finalists is to enjoy the experience while maximising their networking opportunities. ‘For the finalists, the hard yards have been done,’ she says. ‘You know, they wouldn’t be a finalist if they hadn’t put in the hours, blood, sweat, and tears.
‘So for me, for the finalist now is to enjoy it: to enjoy the experience, the people that they meet, the networking opportunities they get, and to embrace the exposure. Let the results play out.’
When it comes to setting goals, she encourages young professionals to be flexible.
‘For me, goals are quite evolutionary,’ she says. ‘They evolve with wisdom and experience. To keep going is everything because in the tech space failure is inevitable. And we have failed so many times. The idea is to get back up, to learn from those failures, to build that resilience in yourself and to try again, and to do it even if afraid. That’s been our mantra over the years.’
Author
Mpho Tshikhudo
