The fourth industrial
revolution (IR4.0) is making waves in the business world, with industries
scrambling to adapt to fast-changing technological trends, in order to stay
relevant in today’s market.
According to the World
Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2018, one of the top ten professions at
the highest risk of being automated is the finance and accounting profession,
which will be a ‘declining’ profession by 2022.
For accounting and
finance to evolve in the value curve, professionals must move on from
repetitive transactional work and become partners that can value add and
undertake strategic work for the businesses they serve.
“The conundrum is this:
finance and accounting professionals are spending 90% of their time performing
transactional work, leaving them very little time for value add, let alone strategic
finance,” said the founder and chief executive officer of a finance,
procurement and HR transformation provider.
The core of finance and
accounting involves transactional work such as making payments to suppliers, ensuring
salaries and expense claims are paid to employees, as well as issuing invoices
to customers, collecting monies and providing financial performance information
of the organization.
Currently, most
accountants, finance managers and even shared services professionals spend the
bulk of their time in the transactional work; i.e. in the “preparing” and
“producing”; which is precisely the areas within finance and accounting where
the automation and robotic evolution has begun.
Automating and robotizing
these repetitive processes, which tend to be voluminous and prone to error,
would increase efficiency and accuracy.
She said that it will
also enable finance and accounting professionals to become respected
brainstorming partners for businesses, as they will be able to focus on value
add activities such as forecasting, budgeting and various analytical work,
including comparing supply chain cost and product line profitability.
Moreover, finance
professionals will be able to lead corporate activities such as funding,
listing, and mergers and acquisitions. One important aspect, she noted, is on
resource allocation coupled with relevant return on investment analysis.
She said, “It is truly
the time to stop pushing the rectangular wheel, take a step back and analyze
how to shape the wheel into a round one, in order to propel your organization
towards agility and competitive edge.”
To move forward, the key
lies in the awareness of opportunities, technology solutions and successful
implementation.
“We can look at learning
from the global business services and finance shared services organizations in
Malaysia, which have been pushing the frontier in automating transactional work
via automation, Robotics Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence and
making inroads in delivering value add finance work to their businesses,” she
added. As the finance and accounting profession rises to the challenge of
IR4.0, she said it is key to network, learn and share from peers in the
industry.
About Us
TMA Solutions was established in 1997 to provide
quality software outsourcing services to leading companies worldwide. We are
one of the largest software outsourcing companies in Vietnam with 2,400
engineers. Our engineering team was selected from a large pool of Vietnam IT
resources; they are well-trained and have successfully completed many large and
complex projects. Visit us at: https://www.tmasolutions.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment