Accounting Disrupted: How Digitalization is changing Finance delivers a powerful analysis of the new technological forces buffeting the accounting profession and identifies key pathways to responding to the challenges. Al Bhimani, distinguished accountant, academic, and author, shows readers how established business fundamentals are being eclipsed and that accounting has not been spared.
You'll learn:
- How the new realities of digitalization, including big data and AI, are affecting audit work and financial management practices
- How learning fast about and from more diverse data sources is essential to the new accounting environment
- Why accounting information must start to speak to what will take place rather than about financial activities that have occurred
- What finance must do in a world of changing risks, data growth, fast digitization, and increased regulation
The author makes a compelling case that accounting now faces a crunch: it needs to reshape itself from the core because conventional financial analysis is proving too cumbersome and slow for executives in digitalized organizations. In a straightforward and illustrated style packed with case studies and practical examples, he shows readers how big data, blockchain, robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence, can help accountants adapt to new realities.
Perfect for finance leaders in both the private and public sectors, Accounting Disrupted also belongs on the bookshelves of accounting students who wish to better prepare for the technological and professional environment in which they’ll shortly find themselves.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
About the Author xvii
Chapter 1 Accounting Disrupted 1
Global Forces Reshaping the Digital Economy 5
What Do Businesses Want? 10
With Great Data Power Comes Great Responsibility 12
Why Data is Growing 13
If Finance Stands Still 15
Notes 17
Chapter 2 Unleashing Digitization 19
Why is Finance Changing? 22
The Rise of Digital 24
Decision-Making and Information: A Warning! 35
Notes 38
Chapter 3 The Trouble with Finance 41
Business is No Longer Linear 43
Strategy Folklore 45
The Importance of “?s” 50
High Sales Volume Means High Profits, Right? 54
How Do New Technologies Disrupt Accounting? 56
What Now? 60
Notes 61
Chapter 4 As If Managing Costs Mattered 63
Accounting Pillars 66
A Risk from Which There is No Return 66
Volume is Half the Story 69
Growth Through Scope 76
Notes 82
Chapter 5 Learning is Everything 83
Learn Fast: Cut Costs Faster 85
Intelligent Learning 87
Push the Pedal 90
Notes 93
Chapter 6 Performance Changes 95
New Targets for Performance Management 98
Whose Performance, Anyway? 99
Operations Get Closer to Strategy 100
Incentivizing Digitalization 101
Data’s Consequences 104
Digitalization Makes All Enterprises Unlike 105
On Being Data-Centric and Intuitive 106
Predictive Performance Management 108
How to Track Digitalization 110
Notes 111
Chapter 7 Digitalization and Auditing 113
Big Data: Big Audit Questions 116
RPAs, AI, and Audits 118
Blockchain is Here 121
Notes 128
Chapter 8 Better Change Your Mind 129
Unite and Conquer: The New Data Mantra 132
What Skills? 137
Risking Digital 140
The Hidden Side of Data: Careful! 144
What “New Normal”? 147
Notes 150
Resources 153
Index 157
