Digitization Of Accounting Firms: A Strategic Challenge For Accountants

In a world where all professions are partially or completely automated to gain efficiency thanks to IT tools. Digitization Of Accounting Firms have also jumped up. This profession was one of the first to integrate computers to facilitate the processing of numerous accounting data, particularly by software such as Excel, to automate mathematical formulas and produce tables and analyses of results.

As the years pass, technologies advance and improve while the traditional accountant industry loses momentum in digital advancement. In addition, new models of accountants are emerging, transforming this essential profession for French companies.

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New Players In The Accountancy Market

The accounting sector is changing gradually and seeing the appearance of new, fully dematerialized players. Online accounting firms meet an increasingly important need for responsiveness from the companies they work with. These pure players, as It Matters To Me, offer automated management services available in real-time through rapid data-sharing applications and software.

This system allows them to offer more attractive prices than traditional competitors and to offer a greater fiscal and strategic support service. This transformation of the accounting profession is in demand during the current health crisis linked to Covid-19 because many companies must change their digital and marketing strategies to stay alive and continue their exercise.

The Advantages Of Automating The Tasks Of The Accountant

The main interest of integrating digital in accounting firms is the gain in efficiency. Indeed, this profession which used to be very time-consuming, is being changed by the digital age and will make it possible to accentuate the work on the part of financial analysis and strategic advice and no longer on the production of accounting documents of all kinds.

The aim is obviously to achieve better support for businesses. Moreover, with the increase in companies’ accounting data, the possible errors related to their manual processing are no longer at all thanks to automatic data processing software. Also, these new working methods make it possible to focus on solving problems with very short deadlines and urgent nature.

Digitization Of Accounting Firms: Tools For Digitalization

More traditional accounting companies wishing to digitize generally choose to set up collaborative platforms to share documents and thus avoid organizing superfluous meetings instantly. For some of the traditional accounting firms and online firms, more advanced tools are used. Such as the chatbot (discussion robot) to immediately respond to customer queries concerning frequently asked questions.

Also, to respond to customers’ growing needs for transparency, speed, and accessibility, applications available on mobiles, computers, and tablets are made available to them, with even the possibility of synchronizing online banking services to access their financial dashboards anytime. Then, AI (Artificial Intelligence) makes its place in the accounting world to process all kinds of data and thus saves more time for the accountant’s consultant cap.

Artificial Intelligence, A Lever For The Digitization Of Accounting Firms

In a search to increase the efficiency of the missions to be carried out, AI is one of the technologies to be used and mastered. For example, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) will enable extracting data from digitized accounting documents such as invoices to integrate them into balance sheets and other income statements automatically. In addition, detecting fraud and errors on these same digitized documents is possible.

The accountant can also produce, quickly, in real-time, forecast results and thus anticipate possible costs related to the internal and external environment of the company. Finally, the accountant can analyze a sector of activity to alert his clients to possible variations in the market thanks to the processing of data, which will be made anonymous, from his database.

Distrust Of IT Tools By Traditional Accounting Firms

However, all of this technological intelligence faces mistrust from traditional accounting firms. Although they use tools like “clouds” to share documents with their customers, many resist using artificial intelligence. Indeed, they lack training and skills on this subject, which causes some hesitation and a lack of confidence in AI.

The profession of a chartered accountant becomes more of a strategic advisor by digitizing the entire process of processing accounting data for companies. This transformation modernizes the profession and ends the cliché of the bespectacled accountant constantly typing on his calculator. From now on, the chartered accountant will be an expert business management consultant.