Game Changing Technologies in Accounting Firms

The report explores the impact of game-changing technologies on PWC, KPMG, Deloittes, and EY accounting firms, highlighting the adoption of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for data entry and automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) for job automation, and Cloud Computing technology to improve efficiency. The technologies are expected to change the nature of accounting services, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and improving customer experience, but also pose a threat to accountants' jobs if they fail to adapt to the digital environment.

Game Changing Technologies 1
GAME CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES
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TOPIC 1 Game Changing Technologies
Executive summary
There have been evidences of the game changing technologies that have affected the
trends of the accounting and consultancy firms. Big financial companies are the first to
embrace these technologies and therefore, change is a dairy aspect in these firms. The trends
are approximated to influence the provision of accounting services in the near future.
Expansion of cloud chamber, optical character recognition and job automation in artificial
intelligence are some of the technologies that companies have embraced in offering
accounting services1. The report will, therefore, seek to research how these technologies are
going to enable the changes in PWC, KPMG, Deloittes, and EY accounting firms.
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,
1 Frey, C.B., Osborne, M.A., Holmes, C., Rahbari, E., Garlick, R., Friedlander, G.,
McDonald, G., Curmi, E., Chua, J., Chalif, P. and Wilkie, M., 2016. Technology at work v2.
0: the future is not what it used to be. CityGroup and University of Oxford.

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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 computer2. 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
2 Chee Ghee, T. and Gul, F.A., 2015. Audit Market Concentration in Malaysia: A Descriptive
Analysis of the Top 10 Audit Firms in Malaysia from 2009-2013.

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computing so efficient and services to the customers are offered at a comfortable and reliable
manner3.
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 computing4.
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 accounting5.
References
3 Sharma, A.K. and Jha, R.K., 2015. Cloud Computing. Expansion, Impact and Challenges of
IT & CS, 103.
4 Vasarhelyi, M.A., Kogan, A. and Tuttle, B.M., 2015. Big data in accounting: An overview.
Accounting Horizons, 29(2), pp.381-396.
5 Rotman, D., 2013. How technology is destroying jobs. Technology Review, 16(4), pp.28-35.

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Sharma, A.K. and Jha, R.K., 2015. Cloud Computing. Expansion, Impact and Challenges of
IT & CS, 103.
Frey, C.B., Osborne, M.A., Holmes, C., Rahbari, E., Garlick, R., Friedlander, G., McDonald,
G., Curmi, E., Chua, J., Chalif, P. and Wilkie, M., 2016. Technology at work v2. 0: the future
is not what it used to be. CityGroup and University of Oxford.
Vasarhelyi, M.A., Kogan, A. and Tuttle, B.M., 2015. Big data in accounting: An overview.
Accounting Horizons, 29(2), pp.381-396.
Chee Ghee, T. and Gul, F.A., 2015. Audit Market Concentration in Malaysia: A Descriptive
Analysis of the Top 10 Audit Firms in Malaysia from 2009-2013.
Sikka, P., 2015. The hand of accounting and accountancy firms in deepening income and
wealth inequalities and the economic crisis: some evidence. Critical Perspectives on
Accounting, 30, pp.46-62.
Rotman, D., 2013. How technology is destroying jobs. Technology Review, 16(4), pp.28-35.