INTHEBLACK August 2024 - Flipbook - Page 48
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CAREER HACKS: THE EVOLUTION
OF ACCOUNTANCY IN A DIGITAL AGE
The need for new tech skills and an understanding of AI and automation has
become critical for accountants. Guy Ioppolo FCPA, a member of CPA Australia’s
Digital Transformation Centre of Excellence, shares insights into the impact
of new technologies on the accounting profession.
GUY IOPPOLO FCPA,
IOPPOLO & ASSOCIATES
THE POWERS AND PITFALLS OF EXCEL
HOW AI DRIVES AUTOMATION
“Excel is not meant to be a data store, but a lot
of people use it as one. So, you end up with all
these islands of data all over the place and
duplication of numbers across different
spreadsheets that don’t match up.
“It doesn’t work well in the distributed use
cases, and everyone knows that spreadsheets
are prone to error, particularly as you increase
the complexity of the spreadsheets.
“The big one that we find really often is the
key man risk associated with it. Some of these
spreadsheets are monsters and you’ve got
people that have developed them, and they’re
the only ones that can go anywhere near them.”
“If you unpack AI, what you actually will find
is a big ecosystem of elements and enablers.
Some of these elements and enablers include
things like the actual data itself, algorithms,
machine learning, neural networks, natural
language processing, robotics, computer
vision, expert systems, APIs, quantum
computing and large language models.
“I will give you an example of one of these
areas, which is the whole robotics process
automation [RPA] area. What this does is it
allows you to automate tedious, repetitive,
time-consuming tasks, so that you can deploy
your valuable human resources to higher-level
duties, rather than having them sit there doing
data entry.
“What AI does on the other hand is provide
you with the brains.”
BREAKING DOWN SILOS WITH ERP
“There are some very useful CRM applications
out there. There are also inventory systems,
accounting packages, field services applications,
document management systems and
e-commerce portals out there.
“While these systems are very useful in
their own right, they often don’t ‘talk’ to
each other. What many businesses do,
often through their accountants, is create
spreadsheets to link all of these bespoke
systems together. An ERP [enterprise resource
planning] system on the other hand, combines
the functionality of these bespoke systems
into one integrated application.”
48 INTHEBLACK August 2024
EVOLVING MINDSET
“A lot of the traditional accounting functions
are being automated now, so you need to shift
your mindset away from compilation to
interpretation and how you can add value
through the identification, implementation
and adoption of efficiency.
“While you need to be at least a little
tech-savvy, you do not need to be, dare I say
it, a ‘propeller head’ these days to engage with
these types of technologies.”
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