By Peter Gearin
From her world of sophisticated data analytics (click here) Natalie Nguyen has seen just how traditional professions like accounting are set to transform as businesses scale faster and automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
The chief executive officer of Hyper Anna, an AI-powered data-analysis tool used by many of Australia's largest financial institutions, says accountants in this sort of augmented world will not be spending their days generating and maintaining reports. Instead, the focus will be on improved customer service and compliance reporting as data analytics helps solve complex problems at lightning speed.
"If we're looking ahead two years, we see accounting roles will be more focused on planning, risk management, capital management and performance monitoring," Nguyen says. "They will spend less time doing all the manual tasks and a lot more time interpreting the information and understanding what it means for the business.
“They will be using their experience to make the right decisions and make ethical judgements. These [tasks] are not going to be replaced by machines any time soon."
In a recent survey undertaken by business software group Sage about half of the 3000 respondents said they would like to automate their number crunching, data entry, email and diary management jobs. The study found two-thirds saying they would invest in AI to automate low level tasks while a slight majority (55 per cent) expect to be using some form of AI within three years....
