Digital Revolution was already there, and COVID-19 has further fueled it to a great extent. Now it is the most opportune time for Chartered Accountants/CMAs and IT Professionals to act together to meet the challenges, and also reap the benefits that may arise out of this "Blessing in Disguise".
Very interesting question. It is one of the topics we address in our laboratory conference which will take place the 29th and 30th of June 2021 (http://www.ligue.iscae.rnu.tn/site/) Salma Damak
According to Gartner, the term “digital” in the early 2000s only ranked among the Top 5 priorities for CEOs in 2.1% of the companies surveyed, whereas today it is a priority for one out of every five companies. The proportion of companies that have a digital strategy rose from 62% in 2018 to 82% in 2019, confirms Gartner, which considers that 90% of companies today have already been confronted with different types of disruption in their business models.
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La lentitud con que caminaba la digitalización de la información contable, especialmente en la mayoría que son las MYPES, paralelamente con los gobiernos en materia de tributación y control. COVID 19 ha acelerado para que la profesión contable y los informáticos puedan aliarse y crear los nuevos escenarios que demanda la gestión de la información, principalmente en el tema de las transacciones y la captura de datos directamente a los centros de procesamiento y mantener la información en línea (actualizados) en el instante tal como tiene el Sistema Financiero.
Thank you Dr. Sanjeev Bansal for bringing up such an interesting topic for scientific discussion. I agree with Sanjeev Kumar's arguments because they are based on reliable Gartner analyzes. I have been observing changes in accounting software and BI applications supporting the use of accounting data in business management since the end of the 1990s. My observations are made from the point of view of financial controlling. Well, I see the problem of generational change among accountants and the challenge of taking advantage of the opportunity of incredibly fast progress in IT technologies dedicated to finance and accounting departments. The old generation of accountants educated at universities in the 1980s was very distrustful of IT inventions for accounting. They perceived IT programs as "expensive toys" that "silt up" (ie do not give clear indications) only the management process. For old accountants from the 20th century, what counts is numbers written on paper and evidence recorded on paper documents (at least this was the case in my country in Poland during the economic transformation in 1989-2004) and IT applications were only to allow better calculation of the whole business. Therefore, in the first decade of the 21st century, a very slow process of purchasing and implementing ERP and BI applications for accounting by companies was found. In the meantime, i.e. in the 21st century, we are exchanging a generation of accountants and financiers in companies. Old staff are going to retire. Currently, in corporations, positions in accounting departments employ people educated in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century, trained in working with computers and having specialized courses in ERP applications. Therefore, there has been a leap up in the field of digital competences of accounting specialists, and a whole spectrum of applications dedicated to accounting and controlling departments has appeared on the market. The shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic added an extraordinary acceleration to the process of retooling accounting and controlling departments for the latest solutions in ERP and BI for quick analysis of thousands of data and automatically calculating indicators necessary in everyday management. This process is also favored by the use of computers with very high computing power compared to the 1990s. Summing up, from the perspective of Poland, a member state of the European Union, we are currently undergoing a digital revolution in accounting and controlling. You cannot sleep it, but adapt as soon as possible in your own companies to the new reality of computerized accounting and digital finance.
This is an interesting topic and it is reflecting the long historical discussion since the account aided by IT, however I agree with Mr. Dariusz Tomasz Grala , the first decade of the 20th century witnessed a rapid transition in IT in adding accounts and finance, however the resistance by old school accounts and finance slowed down the progress and limited it as data entry and preliminary analysis , e.g. revenue, expenses, and balance sheets generation. I have a personal experience in 1997, with an accountant from the old school, and I can understand that resistance behaviour.
from the point of the challenges , there are many issues not yet solved and yet full automation is placed in practical, where, The "loose ends", that what I call the unsolved and validate accounts and finance operation programming issues, e.g. (bills , invoices, stock checking ...etc.) as images or photos are yet authenticated as well as e-stock checking.