The controlling and auditing of organizational transactions in real time allows to determine the degree of reliability with which they are carried out, mitigating the organizational risk. This paper presents a solution proposal under a new vision for organizational auditing and monitoring in real time since it is focused on the implementation of continuous assurance services in organizational transactions in compliance with the formalisms of a business ontological model. Furthermore, this paper contributes for a new paradigm of the transactional auditing, which is intended to be at a very low and detailed level of organizational transactions.
Currently organizations are facing several challenges, for example their organizational transactions have grown in volume and complexity and they are living in highly regulated business environments. Thus, controlling and monitoring mechanisms are needed in order to evaluate and validate all transactions, in a comprehensive manner, to meet the controls and regulations. However, the traditional audit process occurs mostly after the completion of transactions, since it is not feasible to audit them in time. Thereby it makes it possible to inhibit the risk associated to their execution. Therefore,
for many organizations there is a significant risk of errors and fraud and these are not detected in time, resulting in a negative impact on organizations. See, for example, the current global financial crisis and successive well-known scandals in some organizations, such as Lehman Brothers, A-Tec, Madoff, Kaupthing Bank, WorldCom, Enron, Parmalat
and Tyco cases and many others [1-4]. Thus, any organization must be sufficiently prepared to survive, regardless of exposure and of the large number of risks it is subject to, by implementing a suitable system of Continuous Assurance in accordance
with applicable legislative and regulatory framework. Continuous Assurance has been assuming an important role within the organizational context because it is the application of emerging information technologies to the standard techniques of auditing. "Continuous" does not mean real time, but it means to be effective, considering and being consistent with the pulse and rhythm of each organizational transaction and process [5,6].
These aspects have propelled to create a new awareness of corporate governance and of the growing importance of monitoring and controlling the various organizational transactions (that is, any activity performed within a business process). Along with this evidence, a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers [7]examined various organizations and concluded that about 89% of participating organizations intend to adopt
more solutions of continuous auditing and monitoring by 2012.
A solution with assurance services capable of continuous monitoring of organizational transactions incompliance with the formalisms of a business ontological model is an innovative vision. This because transactions are monitored and audited at a very low leve
l, contrary to what happens in most monitoring of transactions that occurs at a high level (for example, comparing whether a completed transaction followed a set of established procedures). Another innovative vision presented in this paper is the implementation of a repository that contains and maintains the risk profiles of the transactions to monitor and audit, following the presented ontology.
This paper contributes for this new vision with a proposal of a conceptual architecture of a management information system which aims continuous monitoring of organizational transactions executed and supported exclusively in digital format supported by a business ontological model.
