BUSINESS
THE EVOLUTION OF DIGITALISATION, TECHNOLOGY, AND EMPLOYEE SKILLS IN PROFESSIONAL SERVICES Professional Services is changing rapidly: with new data analytic capabilities, automation taking over many finance and audit tasks, machine learning augmenting decision-making, and blockchain promising to streamline bookkeeping. The widening skillsets of accountants, lawyers and other consultants in the Professional Services sector will need to evolve with the arrival of complex technologies and the needs of employers and their clients.
clearly apparent as we enter the 2020’s. A skills transformation is now happening and will continue over the next decade as professionals need to continuously reinvent themselves and re-learn. Furthermore, the realisation that no one individual can solve complex business An awareness that consultants and profes- problems alone is driving increased sionals must be “future ready” to remain connectivity between professionals as relevant is emerging as the need to learn, collaboration to deliver complex, techadapt and apply with the fast changing nology based solutions increasingly digitalisation of business processes is becomes a critical success factor.
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The ICAEW Technology Faculty makes the following points in their recent paper ‘Big data and analytics: the impact on the accountancy profession’: • The trend of big data is being propelled by enormous growth in computing power, new sources of data and the infrastructure to enable innovative knowledge creation. • Applying analytics to big data creates many opportunities for businesses to gain greater insight, predict future
Outsourcing&More | May–June 2020
