What Does 2020 Hold for Management Accountants?
What Does 2020 Hold for Management Accountants?
It’s 2020, a milestone year as it marks the beginning of the 21st century’s third decade. What will this historic year hold for the management accounting profession?
Technology and economic disruption are poised to reshape accounting and finance as we once knew it, demanding management accountants rethink their very roles and functions.
I’ve written about these trends in Forbes before, but as we prepare for the new year, I thought I’d poll some members of the IMA® (Institute of Management Accountant) Global Board of Directors about what they think the profession must do to thrive in 2020.
Their responses should be helpful to those management accounting professionals who are looking to advance their skills and competencies for 2020 and beyond. I polled them on four key areas, critical to the future of the profession: Technology and Data Analytics, Decision Making and Strategy, Global Operations and 21st Century Finance Professionals “Coming of Age.”
Technology and Data Analytics
It’s probably no surprise that advances in technology loom large in experts’ 2020 forecasts. “The more tedious transactional work will continue to contract and get automated, Big Data and machine learning will enable insights and analysis like never before,” according to Esteban Quiros, CMA, global FP&A manager for Procter & Gamble.
The rise of Big Data enables professionals to accumulate information at an unprecedented scale, but knowing how to obtain and use it is a different story.
“From my perspective, management accounting is impacted by the massive advance in the area of Data Analytics,” says Fatema El-Wakeel, CMA, finance business partner for data analytics at a U.K.-based luxury car manufacturer.
“Data Analytics involves things like Data Engineering and cleansing, modelling and of course delivering the message through visualization…Technology has enabled management accountants to deliver on-the-the job more efficiently and effectively, which will be needed for [the profession] to advance in 2020.”
