Technology and audit, ii.II.
I have recently been looking at ways in which technology might be used to improve the audit process in the future, which brought me to consideration of the benefits of using a digital pen. DNV Business Assurance has a number of clients who use such pens for recording inspection, test and delivery data, and it was seeing these in action that inspired me to give the pen a go.
The general principle is that the pen has a tiny camera at the nib end, and the (special) paper has a series of almost invisible dots across each page. Between the two, the pen knows exactly where the nib is on a page, and can therefore digitally record what is being written. Whenever convenient, the pen is placed into a USB cradle and the data in the pen automatically synchronises with the attached computer.
As a result, written notes are backed up, which wouldn’t normally happen with plain old pen and paper without photcopying each page. This means that previous notes are always on the laptop, even if the notebook is elsewhere. The written word can also be exported directly into a PDF format. The most useful part is that it is possible to convert the written word to text which can then be cut and pasted into other applications such as Word or Excel. This means that at the end of the day I can transfer my written notes directly into an audit report, rather than having to type them up from scratch. A small amount of editing is usually required, but it does save time.
In my opinion, it works well and has some merit. If you make regular notes that need to be better protected from loss, or that need to be written up on a regular basis, it is worth having a look at and making your own decision. In the longer term, I reckon tablet PCs or “pad” devices are the future, but more on that another time .
This is the pen I have been using – I don’t make any promises and “other digital pens are available”, as they say .
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