Al Bhimani - Accounting Disrupted: How Digitalization Is Changing Finance

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 4
4. Chapter 5
5. Chapter 7
6. Chapter 8

ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR ACCOUNTING DISRUPTED: HOW DIGITALIZATION IS CHANGING FINANCE

Accounting Disrupted is a gamechanger. It will recharge accounting in readiness for the next decade. Ignore this book at your peril.

Teemu Malmi, Professor, Aalto University

At a time when the digital economy is disrupting business models and reshaping P&Ls, Al shows us its impact on accounting. He reveals how business leaders can tackle this critical transformation proactively and thoughtfully.

Salman Amin, Chief Executive Officer, Pladis Foods Ltd.

"Anyone interested in the way digital technologies are transforming accounting, and accounting's role in the financial management of an organization resulting from this digital transformation, needs to read this book!

Lawrence Gordon, Professor, Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

Digital technologies are reshaping business, accounting, and financial services. Accounting Disrupted shows how finance can buttress digital transformations with sharp insight and experiencebased focus. No finance leader can afford to ignore this book.

Ashok Vadgama, President, CAMI

Every CFO today faces the challenge of navigating their business and finance function through a digital transformation. Al Bhimani's book show us how to unlearn our analog mindset and reboot it for digital leadership.

Jussi Siitonen, Chief Financial Officer, Amer Sports

Bhimani's book is a masterful blend of insight and professional relevance on digitalization the greatest challenge facing accounting and finance today.

Salvador Carmona, Professor, Rector, IE University

Bhimani provides invaluable insights into how the digital revolution continues to change the landscape of financial management. This book is a mustread not only for accountants and financial managers but for all Clevel executives, and those aspiring to enter the Csuite.

Martin P. Loeb, Professor, Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

Accounting Disrupted presents a crystalclear exposition of how digital is changing the financial profession. Accounting professionals and students will think differently after reading this book

Antonio Dvila, Professor, IESE Business School

Al Bhimani

Copyright 2021 by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781119720065 (hardcover)

ISBN 9781119720119 (ePDF)

ISBN 9781119720096 (ePub)

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For Farah

Digitalization is the biggest transformation in the history of business, and the scale of disruption is palpable within every organization. Digital technologies are being applied across many enterprises at supercharged speed, creating new business models just as traditional ones are being destroyed. What is most striking is the incompatibility of conventional managerial knowledge and operating tools with the challenges and opportunities digital brings. Adeptness and agility are the catchwords in the new economic future being created, but little can happen in the absence of informed insight. This book is about how financial intelligence must become current with the effects and potential of digital transformations in business. Until now, accounting and financial reporting has been a key driver of decisions across every imaginable organizational context. In a world where managing is reliant on knowing about economic transactions, accounting information is invaluable. That world, however, is ceasing to exist as fast as forms of data are diversifying, and their sources multiplying. No executive can continue to depend on the narrow representation provided by traditional financial reports.

Predictive data drawn from a vast network of sources are not just essential for survival but can supercharge enterprise growth. Digital technologies are about just that the reshaping of exchanges, and the production and analysis of data to direct executive action. Moreover, automated machines are developing the capacity to make more and more decisions. This represents a shift from humanbased work to machinedetermined action. Further still, products can themselves emit data that will eliminate the need for remote information systems, including conventional accounting controls. These changes take accounting's potential into a new realm. Finance professionals must loop into this.

This book starts by discussing broad forces of change that affect accounting. It explains major digital technologies that are transforming organizations and impacting finance work and explores the following in relation to how accounting is being disrupted by digital:

• How do data analytics, robots, AI technologies, and blockchains enhance accounting?