Michael Krahn CPA, CMA, CHFP, MS Business Analytics and Project Management

September 25, 2024

Digital accountants have the necessary skills to lead continuous finance transformation in their organizations. They continuously learn and teach their teams new skills. The digital accountant adapts as technology continues to change the business of accounting.

In nearly every accounting / finance transformation article we read today, one of the key risks and potential barriers to a finance organization’s successful transformation, is finding the people with the right mix of skills to design, build, implement, and maintain a digitally transformed finance function. There are only two ways to get the right people on your team, train them or hire them. But what specific skills will your team members need, why do they need them, and how can they obtain them?

One way to obtain the needed skills is through formal education. In 2017, I successfully completed the nationally ranked Master of Science in Business Analytics and Project Management (MSBAPM) program at the University of Connecticut. It was during my time at UCONN that I learned the skills of advanced data analysis and their applications for business. While studying everything from data wrangling to building and interpreting machine learning (ML) models and effectively managing related projects, I began to truly appreciate how dramatically the business of accounting and finance would, as a result of these technologies, change over the next decade.  

Perhaps the most expedient and effective way to obtain and maintain competence in these areas is to engage a knowledgeable external consultant to train your teams, while assisting the organization's finance and training departments to enhance their training materials in these areas. 

Regardless of how your organization decides to obtain and maintain these skills, accountants who wish to excel in their chosen field must aspire to be digital accountants!

In the first section of this article, we will focus on the specific technical skills successful accountants should begin learning now and obtain mastery of in the next few years.

Here are seven critical skills that accountants should obtain to be successful in the age of digital accounting:

1. Learn to code using a high-level open-source programming language like Python, and understand the available related tools for finance

I simply cannot stress the importance of this skill enough. Combining the power of coding / programming and the knowledge of how to apply the code to business problems inside and outside of the finance area, is the single most powerful combination of tools a finance professional will have at their disposal for the future. Accountants don’t have to be software developers, nor do they need expensive or complex development environments in which to code. Digital accountants do need to competently use computer programming to:

· Take advantage of open-source software technology and in particular, the huge Python data science ecosystem, as a component of digital transformation

· Quickly develop small programs that automate routine finance tasks without the need for IT specialists

· Instantly earn the trust and respect from IT, vendors, and peers as they become more involved in technology related projects across the organization

· Efficiently and effectively adapt to proprietary data analytics and AI based decision support platforms adopted by their organizations

· Fill gaps that will invariably appear in ERP, Decision support, and Revenue systems data integration.

Once you become a competent coder in Python, your problem-solving skills for business increase exponentially as does your value to the organization. Your ability to collaborate with IT and operational areas is greatly enhanced, and you reduce the need for expensive proprietary software to solve technology related issues for finance. Big problems quickly become small ones when you can code!

2. Efficiently and effectively obtain needed data from multiple sources. Ensure that the data is consistent across all potential sources

Successful accountants in the future must be comfortable with obtaining and validating data from multiple sources. Of course, the goal of any digital transformation effort is to have a single source for all organizational data that is ready for consumption by all. Realistically, however, for most organizations, it will take many years to make this happen and accountants will need to independently, obtain data for their analyses from both inside and outside of the organization, clean, and validate the data for analysis and modeling.

3. Competently visually explore the raw data for understanding

All Accountants should have formal training in how to effectively create data visualizations, interpret them, and communicate generated insights. Being able to quickly identify outliers and develop visual correlations in the data is critical. It is no longer acceptable to ‘hope’ that you are selecting the right graph for presenting your analyses and accountants must be confident they are ‘telling the right story’ via their graphs / visualizations.

4. Use basic statistical techniques to better understand the data and determine correlations between the data points and types

All Accountants should have formal training in how to effectively apply and interpret basic statistical analyses to their data sources. It is simply not possible for humans to understand a numerical data set of any material size without understanding its shape (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, outliers) and being able to interpret, and communicate statistical concepts.

5. Design workflow automation for all routine tasks, financial reporting, and regulatory compliance

The financial statement close and related compliance reporting (financial, tax and regulatory), most financial planning and analysis (FP&A) activities, budgeting, and internal and external audit preparation must be largely automated. Review, validation, interpretation, communication, and most importantly, recommendations based on the results of these automated tasks will be the responsibility of the accounting team.

6. Interpret and validate AI and Machine learning (ML) generated insights

Implementing AI and employing ML predictive modeling and advanced time series forecasting means that accountants will need to understand how these tools work, how to interpret the results the tools are creating, and how to revise / optimize the tools when the results don’t make sense.

7. Expertly communicate data insights to decision makers in ‘real time’.

Accountants must master the ability to quickly develop custom reports from existing systems (ERP, Decision Support, Revenue, etc.) without customization by the system’s vendor, and derive ‘real-time’ insights from their combined data sources. We must become experts at communicating to leadership, with confidence, the organizational value of these insights and value-adding courses of action based on them.

There are of course, many critical non-technical skills that accountants will also need to master and consistently demonstrate to be successful. Some of these are:

1. Business operations knowledge and inter-departmental communication / collaboration

Finance and accounting will lead many of the digital transformation efforts across the business and therefore must “know” the business more fully than in the past. A working knowledge of IT, Supply Chain, Human Resources, and major operations workflows is necessary for finance to effectively lead business-analytics related projects. Finance must also always be ‘at the table’ when the organization is planning for and implementing digital technology to ensure the applications are in alignment with finance workflows and capabilities.

2. Finance department structure and workflow design

Accountants must be knowledgeable in reorganizing the traditional finance functions for effective and efficient use of data. Clean data that is ‘fit for purpose’ should be the responsibility of a financial data team prior to making it available to all of finance in ‘real time'. All accounting team members should rotate into the financial data team for training and feedback on financial data-flow improvement.

3. Alignment of financial operations with organizational mission and strategy

Finance and accounting must always be aware of organizational strategy and align their data related projects with this strategy as well as effectively communicate to their teams, the ‘why’ of transformation projects.

4. Advanced accounting and financial reporting concepts and application

Application of accounting guidance for all stakeholders will always be a core responsibility of accounting professionals.

5. Leadership and ethical behavior

Hopefully, little clarification is needed on this one. Finance leaders and professionals must understand how specifically the organization defines ethical behavior in the age of digitization and must adhere to those expectations and the guidance of professional organizations.

6. Expertise in internal control over digital transformation and management of related risks

Reorganization of the traditional finance and accounting function will be necessary and internal controls will need to adapt accordingly.

7. Expert communication skills across all levels of the organization

Accountants and other finance professionals will be the primary creators of data-based operational insights for the organization. It will become critical that accountants through their analyses, be able to effectively “tell the story” indicated by the data. That is, what happened, how should the organization respond, and which prescriptive measures are indicated for success in the future.

In our new video learning series coming soon to the Remarc website, I will be demonstrating the application of many of these skills and techniques using the Python programming language and several Python based libraries that are well suited for financial applications. Many of these lessons will also feature integration with Microsoft Excel. Python is likely to be Excel’s analytics engine in the future and Microsoft insiders are currently evaluating a beta version of ‘Python in Excel’. Please check our ‘video learning’ page for regular updates.

Please contact me personally at (203)500-0343 If you’d like to get more information about any recommendations in this blog or how the transformation experts at Remarc Consulting and Data Solutions can help your organization on its transformation journey.

Michael A. Krahn

CEO Remarc Consulting and Data Solutions, LLC