Long ago, accountants were very prolific Mathematicians who couldn’t survive without spending long hours making physical spreadsheets. Their entire careers revolved around repetitive and complex Mathematical calculations and paper pushing. In fact, the field of accounting created more job opportunities as industries tried to further specialize the professional duties of an accountant. For increased efficiency, clerks and other clerical officers took up some of the paper pushing and other forms of financial correspondence to free up accountants’ time. Thanks to technology, the expertise of accounts is continuously specializing in a financial advisory role. The Mathematical and correspondence duties are almost entirely taken over by technology.
How is Technology Revolutionizing Accounting?
With 90 percent of all Americans owning smartphones and 70 percent of home-based accounting firms acknowledging their use of remote networking to coordinate accounting and sales members, the modern day accountant is no longer a paper pusher. Modern-day accountants don’t crush numbers anymore; they have the technology to process information and analyze empirical data. Their main functions today require an entirely different skill set that was only reserved for financial analysts and CFOs. Some of the key roles that accountants are expected to perform seamlessly in the Information Age includes:
- Professional Skepticism.
- Critical thinking.
- Governance, risk and compliance management.
- Opportunity scouting and conducting market surveys.
To understand how automation via technology is revolutionizing accounting, we must analyze some of the innovations taking over critical roles previously dispensed by accountants manually.
Artificial Intelligence
Accounting demands very many repetitive processes that waste time and cause errors of omission or double entry. Some of the processes are too complex for the human brain to tackle in short spans of time and still dispense other indispensable duties. That is all changing as artificial intelligence and robotics are automating such professes and ultimately reducing operational costs, improving data management and increasing accuracy. Nonetheless, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants stipulates that such artificial intelligence and robotics are just tools that can’t replace the essence of a human accountant. They just make accountants’ jobs easier and improve their overall productivity. The rationale by the professional body questions the limit of the intelligence because AI technologies can’t:
- Discern real-time priorities.
- Learn from experience.
- Understand visual images.
- Make creative and innovative interventions
- Negotiate.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is powered by the internet, and it allows accountants and other departmental heads of a company to operate under the same programs remotely and from dispersed locations. It networks company personnel with different levels of access to data. Via cloud computing, different departments can forward their financial records in formats that are easy to store, input and analyze instead of leaving the draining chore to a limited supply of accounting officers. With coordinated connectivity with smartphone-connected clients, accountants can now focus more on listening to the humane expectations. Previously, they were hard pressed on focusing on rigid processes more.
Salesforce Accounting
Salesforce accounting is powered by customer relationship management technologies. The main goal of CRM software and programs is always to improve business relationships and to increase operational efficiency. Well, with salesforce accounting, you won’t have to keep inputting the same information into different systems. The power of Salesforce integration accounting is combining all of your sales and customer preferences with your accounting records. The result is that the accuracy of your accounting hits an absolute high because you can detect errors from the very second an inaccurate entry is keyed in.
Salesforce as a technology by itself is pretty powerful enough to change accounting because it changes how companies do business. It integrates the communication of your company’s entire sales and marketing team for coordinated efforts in the pursuit for expanding market shares and growing customer success. It also streamlines the immense efficiency-boosting gains that are already advanced by other technologies such as:
- Social media.
- Innovations in tax software.
- Mobile accounting.
