SAS, FACTS Consulting Urge Organisations To Detect Procurement Fraud Before Losses Escalate

Organisations need to move procurement fraud prevention closer to the point where suspicious activity occurs, rather than relying primarily on investigations after money has already been lost, according to SAS and FACTS Consulting.

The call follows SAS’s Continuous Monitoring for Procurement Integrity client session held at its Johannesburg offices on 19 August, where the discussion focused on how continuous monitoring and AI-driven analytics can help organisations identify vulnerabilities earlier and strengthen controls while improving transparency across procurement operations.

Chris McAuley, Director of Fraud and Security Intelligence for SAS EMEA and APAC, says procurement activity often spans fragmented systems and large volumes of data, while many organisations still lack an independent monitoring capability across the procurement environment.

“By the time an irregularity reaches an audit or investigation, the organisation may already be dealing with the financial and operational consequences. Continuous monitoring changes the timing. It gives organisations a way to look across procurement activity as it happens and identify emerging indicators that deserve investigation before the exposure grows,” says McAuley.

Moving the point of detection forward

Traditional audits remain important, but they provide a view at a particular point in time. Fraud, error, waste, and abuse do not follow a schedule. Suspicious behaviour can arise from relationships between employees and suppliers, repeated transactions, unusual purchasing patterns, or attempts to work around established controls.

The SAS Payment Integrity for Procurement solution is designed as an enterprise-wide continuous monitoring capability to detect potential instances of fraud, error, waste, and abuse (FEWA) throughout the procurement cycle. It…