Overcoming the decline of accounting specialists requires businesses to embrace digitalization. Digital tools and advanced technologies can not only improve the accounting process and empower existing accounting teams but also help businesses bridge the gap when facing talent shortages.
Let’s examine the driving factors behind the accounting talent shortage and how digital tools can enable more efficient and automated accounting processes.
What’s causing the shortage of accounting specialists?
The talent pool for accounting professionals is quickly diminishing — but why?
Younger generations of employees like Gen Y and Gen Z are digital natives. These modern-day employees expect access to advanced digital tools, as well as more flexible work environments that align with their personal workflows and processes.
Engaging with outdated tools and high-stress manual processes requires accounting teams to work at breakneck speed to keep up with a company’s financial demands. Pair this with the increasing complexity of financing reporting, and you end up with an accounting and finance department that is overworked and lacks focus.
Without talented accounting teams with a strong understanding of modern technologies, companies can quickly fall behind their competitors when it comes to financial efficiency.
The compliance risks of an accounting talent shortage
Digitization is a crucial enabler to a modern, highly efficient, and secure accounting process.
Many finance teams still rely on outdated practices, for example, working with Excel spreadsheets to realize financial consolidation, planning, and reporting. Relying on this type of manual approach can create significant inefficiencies in the accounting process.
This often impacts employee wellbeing and results in a high churn rate, with employees becoming disengaged due to demoralizing, time-consuming, and highly manual processes. As a result, businesses can then struggle to manage their compliance obligations.
Finance and accounting teams require seamless access to supplier, personnel, and financial data to support ESG reporting efforts.
For example, manual systems often fail to provide real-time insights into a business’s workforce demographics, diversity metrics, and training compliance, impeding the ESG reporting process. By contrast, digitization enables the standardization of data from various sources and facilitates integration with internal systems for comprehensive reporting.
Upgrading from outdated processes and systems to a modern CFO platform solution can ensure accurate reporting and reduced compliance risks, and enhanced disclosure management.
How digitization benefits the accounting function
The digitization of financial business functions has been ongoing for several years, yet many companies still lag behind in terms of updating their accounting and corporate performance systems.
An effective accounting function is vital within any business, regardless of what industry to which it belongs. With CFOs facing skill shortages as a major medium-term risk, finding ways to align financial accounting with both human resources and digitization efforts is key.
Here are four key benefits of digitization tools for accounting:
- Optimized efficiency: Digitization streamlines financial accounting processes, reducing manual errors and improving accuracy in various accounting reports. With the right set of digital tools, business can enable seamless sharing of information between their accounting system, financial team, and other business departments.
- Boosted cost savings & scalability: Automated workflows and digital storage minimize paper-based accounting tasks and their associated costs, freeing up resources for strategic initiatives and digitization initiatives. Plus, upgrading an accounting system to a modern digital environment ensures a highly scalable infrastructure.
- Enhanced decision-making: Real-time data analytics provide insights into financial trends and challenges at a company, allowing for informed decision-making in accounting processes, budget allocation, and strategic financial planning. Advanced data capabilities also help to eliminate data silos, helping business teams collaborate more effectively.
- Flexible compliance models: Digitized systems facilitate prompt compliance with regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of legal penalties and reputational damage. A highly adaptable digital platform can evolve with regulatory changes, keep up with reporting requirements, and alert businesses of top compliance concerns in the accounting department.
