On the Potential of Using ERP Business and System Data for Fraud Detection

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are used to support and to control the business processes of a company or organization. Such systems integrate the data across the entire company into a complete system that is capable of enhancing the key operations in virtually any department. Commonly, running an ERP system helps companies operate more efficiently, however, this also leads to problems. Employees are able to enrich themselves through insider knowledge or by exploiting incomplete or incorrect permission settings. This is referred to as occupational fraud. Since ERP systems keep records of all executed business activities and log system events and permission checks, they provide a variety of different data sources that can be used to detect occupational fraud. This paper reviews existing literature in the area of fraud detection and fraud cases based on ERP data including business data and system data. Using the most widespread ERP system from SAP, the potential and the suitability of the various data sources with respect to fraud detection is examined.