Introduction
Embracing the game changing technologies for the PWC, KPMG, Deloittes and EY accounting firms has been gradual and based on offering better services for the clients. The endeavour has been accompanied by both positive and negative consequences. For the accountants, the experience has been quite different because some have lost their jobs. The company has however been able to advance in outsourcing and offshoring based on job automation and mobilized knowledge in accounting.
Optical Character recognition (OCR) for the case of PWC, KPMG, Deloittes, and EY
The four companies use OCR for a variety of functions. For instance, PriceWaterCoopers (PWC) is the biggest firm that serves worldwide. Since the beginning of the 21st century the company has been running big data both in legal systems, in account details and also receipts. The company uses Optical word recognition system in capturing these character. Other companies such as KPMG, Deloittes, and EY operates in English, French, Turkish and other language dominated countries. They use OCR for business, finance and accounting transcription through IWR technology. The technology makes it very easy for the organization because the important documents, the printed documents, and all the needed documents are directly scanned as ‘Word’ or other format needed on the computer. The work that the accountant would take 5 hours, for example, is reduced to a five-minute task.
Artificial intelligence/Job Automation in PWC, KPMG, Deloittes, and EY.
Artificial intelligence is another game changing technology in these companies. PWC, KPMG, Deloittes, and EY has a vision that in the next 5 years, they will be able to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) with humans so as the efficiency would be realized. Deloittes in UK has already released a report aiming at achieving robotics and automation systems in their firm in the next decade. The tasks that are normally performed by the human beings are seen to be done by the computer systems. In these firms, human intelligence such as visual perception, recognition of signatures and voices. Translating documents and human speech from different languages will be done by computer systems.
Cloud computing technology for the case of PWC, KPMG, Deloittes, and EY firms.
Cloud computing technology has already been implemented in PWC, KPMG, Deloittes, and EY firms. EY for instance, has already started using cloud computing tax technology. According to the KPMG company report of 2016, the cloud computing technology has saved a lot for the company, it has improved agility and responsiveness, accelerated innovation and finally, saved computing time for the accountants. The program can perform a great deal of computations per second. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), are the commonly used in these four companies. They make computing so efficient and services to the customers are offered at a comfortable and reliable manner.
How the technologies will enable change?
The game changing technologies will, therefore, be performing many of the tasks in these accounting firms. Very few accountants will be needed for the service as much of their work will be performed by these intelligent systems like data entry, data management, security of thye firm and also computing.
The firms will be in a position to increasingly outsource their services to reduce the cost and shift their tasks as they will be able to involve and contract another party outside and inside the firms. Outsourcing will be in human resource tasks of management which the third party in a sector such as IT will be entrusted to perform certain accounting roles through the digital game changing technologies.
Conclusion
The PWC, KPMG, Deloittes and EY accounting companies should be in a position to determine the current trends in accounting for the progress to be seen in the next five years. The game changing technologies are meant to reduce the service cost, increase the efficiency in service and also improve the customers experience. The accountants should, therefore, diversify their career by being more innovative, updated so as they can be able to adapt to the digital environment estimated to be created in the near future in these companies. Failure to that, the accountants may lose their job to a full new team of digital experts in accounting.
References
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