Today, several accounting professionals spend a huge time on financial statements, preparing tax returns, and conducting audits says Aron Govil. All these looks into the transaction and concentrate on the compliance needs of a company, for instance, submitting the financial statements to the investors or preparing tax returns a year before and paying the due taxes.
As the accounting profession undergoes online transformation, the conventional activities and roles of the accountants should transform. A 2017 survey by PwC on the impact of digitization on the financial statement audits highlighted that the respondents expected about 10% to 20% of the auditing activities will get automated by 2022.
Hence, it’s time for accounting professionals to think of ways to maximize their value. And it’s essential to know how to go about it? One of the ways is to shift to a future-based mindset. While the compliance needs like the tax returns and the financial statement audits keep the business profits and transactions in hindsight, the executives, business owners, and operation personnel move through the everyday business decision having a leading mindset.
It is essential to understand the operations
Aron Govil says that accountants have enormous scopes to partner strategically with the executives, owners, and operation personnel. However, The operational divisions encounter challenging decisions that will affect the business’s success daily. Here the accountants are capable of helping in such decisions. You can accomplish it by estimating the ROI of a purchased asset, opting in for buy or make decisions, or generating the what-if scenarios for modeling the result of competing decisions or solutions. For example, take the case of FedEx, a delivery business. As the trucks become older and need increased repairs and maintenance, the accounts can help the operations managers model the anticipated expense of maintaining a truck against the expense of purchasing a new truck and also against the refurbishing cost.
Upskill and obtain talent
The latest research suggests that an accountant’s job is in high demand. And in a competitive job market, having a recruiting mindset is the initial step for obtaining and locating accounting professionals. While the market players attempt to attract the employees from one another, investing in the employees provides them a good reason for staying put. Offering future and formal training programs will equip the accounting employees with all the training required to stay successful in this digital age. Also, the investment develops a stronger and better relationship between the employee and the company witnesses enhanced retention. It is one of the most critical objectives of most employers.
Generate leading indicators
Most businesses have created a couple of interest metrics and have tracked them as business performance indicators. Aron Govil says that such metrics are mostly historical views of financial performance. Like net income, gross profit, inventory turnover, and outstanding sales. It is essential to recognize and also keep track of the leading indicators. ‘
These are some of how accountants can increase their value and keep up with companies’ expectations today.