2000 Case Grant Recipients

KPMG LLP and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Business Measurement Case Development and Research Program
Grant Recipients

KPMG and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are pleased to announce case development grants under the Business Measurement Case Development and Research Program. During the Program’s third submission period, nineteen proposals were received requesting grants totaling approximately $651,200. Eight proposals totaling $296,900 have been selected for funding, with an average award of $37,113. Under the Program, case development grant recipients can apply for follow-on research grants of up to $50,000 after case projects have been completed.

The KPMG/University of Illinois Business Measurement Case Development and Research Program is distinguished from other academic funding programs in three ways:

• Cases developed under the Program focus on the importance of understanding the client’s strategy and systems dynamics when performing a financial-statement audit.
• Scholars in the fields of strategy, accounting, and auditing, together with practicing professionals, establish close working relationships and share knowledge and insights during case development and research projects.
• Scholars design follow-on research projects after having obtained valuable experience applying the new assurance technologies that will be subjected to critical analysis.

All proposals received during the third submission period were reviewed by the following members of the Program’s Advisory Board: Timothy B. Bell – KPMG; William R. Kinney, Jr. – University of Texas at Austin; Katherine Schipper – Duke University; Ira Solomon – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The following case proposals were selected for funding:

Case Developer/ Institution	Tentative Project Title	Project Description
Robert Ashton Alison Hubbard Ashton Duke University	Knowledge Assets and the Strategic-Systems Audit	This case will explore the nature of knowledge assets, their relative importance to the entity’s strategy and market value, the processes for managing knowledge assets, and techniques for measuring the stocks, flows, and rates of change of such assets.
Brian Ballou Richard Tabor Auburn University	Strategic-Systems Auditing in a Rapid-Growth Retail Environment	This case will demonstrate why knowledge about process performance obtained by the strategic-systems auditor is critical to forming an opinion on the financial statements of a high-growth retail entity.
Gary Braun Linda Sama University of Texas at El Paso	The Strategic-Systems Auditor’s Evaluation of Business Risks and Controls for Outsourced Processes	This case focuses on application of the strategic-systems auditing framework to assess the validity of financial-statement assertions affected by a client’s production outsourcing strategy. Students will learn about trends in outsourcing and will explore the opportunities and risks associated with outsourcing.
Roger Debreceny Nanyang Technological University- Singapore Glen Gray Cal State University at Northridge Rick Hayes Cal State University at Los Angeles	Creating and Monitoring Strategic Information Through Data Mining	This case will focus on how modern data mining techniques are used by management to create and monitor information about changes in the entity’s environment and performance of its core business processes. The case also will show how the strategic-systems auditor can use data-mined information to obtain insights about the organization’s business model and interrelationships among financial-statement and other financial and non-financial data.
Samuel DeMarie William Dilla Anthony Hendrickson Iowa State University	Strategic-Systems Auditing for Web-Based Operations	This case will examine how new applications of technology, especially web-based transaction processing systems, affect business risks, controls, and related performance metrics.
Aasmund Eilifsen Norwegian School of Economics William Messier Georgia State University	Assurance Services for Environmental Reports	This case will involve knowledge acquisition using the strategic-systems auditing (SSA) framework to provide assurance on a client’s environmental report. Students will address the problem of a lack of reporting guidelines, and will learn how to adapt SSA to new assurance service opportunities.
Vidyaranya Gargeya Venkat Iyer University of North Carolina at Greensboro	The Strategic-Systems Auditor’s Evaluation of a Highly Integrated Value Chain	This case will focus on a client in continuous pursuit of operational excellence in the highly- competitive furniture industry. Students will learn how the strategic-systems auditor evaluates the effects of changes in supply chain management and the introduction of ERP systems on the client’s business risk profile, and how this knowledge impacts expectations about financial-statement assertions.
Mahendra Gupta Timothy West Washington University	Evaluating and Leveraging ERP Systems and Related Enterprise-Wide Risk Management Activities in a Strategic-Systems Audit	This case will provide a realistic setting for students to discover (1) how new ERP systems impact business processes and an organization’s enterprise-wide risk management activities and (2) why and how the strategic-systems auditor acquires knowledge about these systems and activities during an external audit.