**6. Conclusion**

The study set out to identify the impacts of digitalization on auditing focusing on the audit process, the auditor's professional profile, the audit user perception, and the auditor-client relationships. Data was collected in South Africa through an SLR and 12 semi-structured interviews. The biggest impact was noted in the audit process with implementing automated auditing levering emerging technologies such as Robotic Process Automation, which resulted in the execution phase of an audit being completed by a robot auditor shifting the focus of the human auditor to exception investigation opinion-forming, judgment, and client engagement. Digitalization in auditing has led to the need for moderate to strong technical IT knowledge by existing auditors, specifically data analytical skills. This had a positive impact on the professional profile of an auditor as it has opened the door for technical specialists to join audit departments to meet the skills demand required for delivering organizations' digitalization strategies. In addition, there is an expectation that the professional profile of an auditor will be more attractive for young professionals and university graduates. The biggest anticipated impact identified is the need to define appropriate costing and pricing models for audit opinions in a digitalized audit environment. The study suggests a value-based costing model would be better suited as it will incorporate the benefits gained from digitalization. This would require further studies to define and validate.

By incorporating all the outcomes for each theme covered in this study, the auditor of the future can be best described as a digitally fluent individual, cross-skilled to use a combination of IT and audit skills to deliver audits in a digitalized audit environment.

Future research could include a focused study on implementing automated auditing using emerging technologies to confirm the impacts on auditing as identified in this study. Research can also be expanded to include the skills required by an auditor working in a digitalized audit environment compared to the skills new market entrants are equipped with after the completion of their auditing degrees or diplomas. This will address the concern highlighted in this study to provide a view of the alignment or potential misalignment between the demand and supply for IT and technology skills in the audit industry. As data was collected in the South African audit industry only, the data collection may be extended in further studies in order to generalize findings.
