The Day After Tomorrow: Will The Accounting Profession Disappear?

With the deepening of the application of financial system informatization, the work of Accountants has changed from old wages, books and statements to "new three things" which concern capital management, budget management and cost management.

Wang Wenjing, chairman of UFIDA company, who was also a financier, was quite impressed by the fourth annual national accounting information conference held recently in Taiyuan.

With the continuous development of new applications of IT tools in the field of traditional financial management, traditional financial accounting and management accounting are undergoing a profound pformation.

The big question that comes with it is: with the continuous penetration of IT tools in the traditional financial field, will one day, or tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the accounting profession, which has been active for thousands of years, will die?

5 years ago, a survey of 1400 CFO by a company named RHI management resources showed that when CFO was asked, "which area do you think is the biggest change in the next 5 years," the answer is 39% of the "more active role in the technical information system". 26% of the "more strategic plans and decision making" is answered, 16% of the increase in cooperation and coordination with other departments, 15% of the "expansion of leadership and management functions", 5% of "uncertainty".

The establishment of management software and information platform such as ERP and BPM not only greatly improves the efficiency of CFO, but also provides them with a series of reliable tools to make them devote more energy to strategic planning and decision making.

Yang Zhounan believes that the computerized accounting popularized in China 20 years ago not only made the financial staff get rid of the tedious manual labor, but also made it possible for them to spend more time doing top management analysis work. On the other hand, with the pformation from the planned economy to the market economy, the enterprise became the sole producer of self financing. In order to ensure its sustainable development, the budget and capital control must be strengthened.

In this pformation process, information technology as a tool to promote the realization of this demand, so that the information of the plan execution and business operation information can be timely feedback, so that timely control and subsequent backtracking can be achieved, and the plan and budget can form a closed loop benign cycle.

In the external environment of global economic integration, the risk of enterprises is increasing sharply, and "capital is everything" is widely recognized, so the CFO class calls for it.

In the pformation of China, CFO can no longer avoid the impact of information technology, which is not only negative, but also further promoting the pformation of CFO's role and positioning.

However, it is worth noting that in the fourth annual national accounting information conference, from 20 years ago to computerized accounting system, we only heard word games.

If we say that traditional financial accounting based on accounting has been unable to break through for thousands of years because it is a financial calculation tool, then in China's management accounting field, haven't we been able to innovate anywhere in the past 20 years?

The huge gap that lies in the theoretical and practical circles can only be bigger and bigger, and can not be bridged at all.

According to the understanding of Finance in the traditional context, CFO is only responsible for managing account keeping business. Most of them are concerned with earnings per share, data recording, budget and internal control. In the information age, CFO no longer focuses on data accounting, but instead focuses on data analysis, how to create and increase value for the company, adapt to external changes through flexible analysis and quick response, pay attention to shareholder value, rational performance, effective resource allocation and utilization, timely manage risks, create value for enterprises based on high-quality human resources and business operations, and IT management tools such as BI and KM have played an indispensable role in this process.

20 years ago, Mr. Yang Zhounan's father, Mr. Yang Jiwan and the late Mr. Yan Da five, have always been supporters and advocates of accounting management activities. They believe that accounting not only provides and reflects information, but also participates in management, such as supporting company strategic decisions from the perspective of financial feasibility analysis.

"The integration of financial business in the IT era is very important, because there is valuable accounting information flow in any process of the enterprise."

Yang Zhounan thinks so.

From the planned economy era to the financial accounting in 1980s, financial management has been put on the agenda. By 1990s, the surging wave of financial information, the Asian financial crisis, the large number of group enterprises, 9. 11 and Enron events have brought many new challenges to the traditional Chinese financial management. It may be a bit pedantic to think about such a problem at such a turning point. But it is also thought-provoking: the IT system is providing new tools for the traditional accounting functions such as reflection, supervision and control. Is there any tomorrow for the traditional accounting profession?