Digitalization in Accounting: how the profession is being impacted by the new technologies.

Abstract

The digitalization process is affecting the most diverse set of fields. Among these, the accounting profession is experiencing many changes related to the diffusion of new digital techniques. Developments in technology, data, and analysis are now becoming so extensive that a fundamental shift in accounting is taking place across many businesses. This work analyzes the evolution of business reporting and of the job of accountants, accounting consultants, and advisors across the centuries, with particular attention to what has changed in the last decade with digitalization. This essay attempts then to better understand four digital technologies that are having an impact on the accounting profession, namely the Cloud, Big data and Business Intelligence & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain, observing how these are helping the sector as well as affecting businesses as a whole. It will also be highlighted how these innovations may pose some threats as well as create new opportunities, complementing and enhancing the accountancy job. Finally, this thesis will deal with how professionals in the field are facing the digital evolution, investigating how accountants and consultants perceive the change, what new skills and competencies they need, how their everyday work is affected, and what they expect, as well as how the organizations in which they work are per se satisfying the new technological expectations, and how they are supporting the development of the specific set of new skills and competencies. The overall analysis is supported by a series of interviews that have been conducted inside a management consulting firm that deals with Italian SMEs, mostly located in the Veneto region.