How Deutsche Telekom Uses Emerging Technologies to Enhance the Internal Control System

Abstract

Adequately designing, effectively operating, and subsequently monitoring an internal control system (ICS), along with digitally transforming business and assurance processes, has become a major challenge in today’s business environment. Deutsche Telekom has established a state-of-the-art ICS by using emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, data analytics, including process mining, and blockchain. The purpose of our study is to explore how these technologies can be utilized to enhance the ICS. We describe and analyze use cases implemented by Deutsche Telekom to provide practical insights into how organizations can conduct a digital transformation of the ICS. We further present avenues for future research. Our findings are informative to ICS managers, other assurance functions, management, CFOs, audit committee members, and corporate governance researchers.Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from the authors upon request.