Secure, Scalable, and Cost-Effective Investigations at Mazars
An Exterro FTK Case Study
Industry: Audit, Accounting, Financial Advisory and Consulting
Headquarters: Paris, France
Employees: 47.000
Revenue: €2.45 Billion for financial year 2021/2022
Founded: 1945
With professionals in more than 95 countries worldwide, Mazars is an internationally integrated partnership firm, specializing in audit and accounting, financial advisory, tax advice, and associated consulting services. Mazars serves clients in the public and private sectors, including industry, professional services, banking and finance, telecommunications, and real estate, among others.
“Inefficient, costly, and desperately boring”
Among the financial advisory services they offer to their clients, Mazars counts a forensic investigation and litigation service line. The forensic team support clients in conducting internal investigations into cases of suspected fraud, whatever their nature might be. Mazars' team of specialists assists clients in various cases of suspected or proven cases of corruption, misappropriation of assets, accounting or tax fraud, market abuse and securities offenses, money laundering, harassment, regulatory offenses and all other misconducts.
Alice Noizet, Partner, and Adam Mesbahi, Manager, of Forensic Investigations and Litigation Services, are two members of Mazars’ forensic investigations team based in its Paris headquarters. Working with large volumes of structured and unstructured data pulled from ERP systems, financial statements, emails, contracts, invoices, and other data sources. While they could feed the structured data into data analytics software for analysis, they lacked a system that could help them quickly analyze the unstructured data, which often provided critical evidence and context in their investigations. But with data volumes exploding, manually reviewing data, even with support from their cybersecurity team, was unsustainable.
As time went by, data volumes increased so that it was not possible anymore to review data manually. Involving more people to handle these large case volumes would have been inefficient, time-consuming, too costly for clients, and desperately boring for the teams.Alice Noizet, Associate Partner, Forensic Services, Mazars
Finding a Scalable, Secure Forensic Investigation Solution
In 2018, Mazars Paris-based team decided they needed to find a dedicated tool to help them search and analyze unstructured digital data, optimize their workflows, and create a more efficient investigation process. Since the forensic services team often worked with colleagues from other offices for international assignments, they needed a solution that supported remote users. Some of these remote users were sometimes not forensic experts (legal counsel, human resources, finance or tax experts, etc.) who needed a user-friendly solution.
However, security was also a priority for Mazars. They would be dealing with clients’ sensitive data during investigations, so they wanted the servers on premises in their Paris office. That way they could reassure their clients that the data always remained in their possession. Scalability was another important element in their decision making, as the anticipated caseloads would increase and the team would grow.
Noizet and Mesbahi turned to their colleagues in the UK, who were using an e-discovery product offering from AccessData (since acquired by Exterro) for similar projects but French team needed its own solution to locate data in France. They investigated other solutions as well, considering both Intella and Relativity, but none of them corresponded to their needs. They finally chose to implement the Exterro solution which evolved to FTK® Central. Its web-based interface allowed remote users to review evidence in investigations, while its servers were secure in the Mazars Paris HQ. FTK Central was cost-effective and could easily scale up depending on their needs.
Focused, Efficient, Effective
Once Mazars decided to go forward with FTK Central, they connected their IT and cybersecurity teams with Exterro and set up the server infrastructure in Paris. Implementation went smoothly, as they were able to configure the software to provide the level of security and confidentiality they promise to their clients. Exterro trained the forensic team of Mazars who then appointed two members, including Adam, as eDiscovery referents who would then serve as trainers for additional investigators and reviewers.
Whenever we get a new member of the team, we give them internal training. If the person is required to do reviews, it actually doesn’t take that much time. The person can be up and running on the platform in a few hours.Adam Mesbahi, Manager of Forensic Investigations and Litigation Services, Mazars
The forensic team has been able to call on colleagues across Europe, in Asia, and on other continents to collaborate on projects, without any concerns about compromising the data’s confidentiality or security. Since the web-based review platform is user-friendly, they’re able to ramp up team members quickly and collaborate effectively.
They’ve also been able to save time in their investigations. Adam explains, “In the past, most of these investigations and the review of unstructured data had to be done manually, so it took weeks or sometimes also months to go through all the data. Having a platform that does that automatically saves a lot of time—and time efficiency is linked to cost efficiency.”
In addition, FTK’s filtering and search capabilities make it more straightforward to finding evidence relevant to the investigation. He continues, “We don’t waste our time going through other documents that are not relevant to our case and go straight to the important elements.”
Speak to an FTK® expert to learn how FTK Central and the entire family of FTK solutions can power your organization’s digital forensic workflows today.
