2020 outlook: data import on the rise

microsoft power bi likely to become the visualization standard.

by roman h. kepczyk
quantum of paperless

security continues to be a significant and increasing threat, but many firm owners continue to assume it is being managed by their it team. we find traditional firm it does a good job on the internal components they control, but there are consistent shortfalls in the use of multifactor authentication, intrusion detection/prevention and staff training.

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with cloud providers having significantly better security and disaster recovery resources than on-premise networks, we expect this will be another reason that the majority of firms give up managing their own networks (with the uber-large firms having their own it/security consulting being the exception). however, all firms need to be training personnel on safe computing when remote, on being suspicious of unexpected emails (phishing), as well as social engineering attacks that could expose their login/password as well as put the firm at risk of ransomware.

while blockchain and artificial intelligence garner a lot of press and questions, the practical implementation of ai tools has not hit our clients yet, so we instead have them focus on what is actually working.

there is a surge in utilization of data import and transfer tools beginning with the use of apis (application programming interfaces) that pull data out of other accounting and business applications and import it directly into accounting products such as quickbooks/xero/intacct. we also see significant interest in the client advisory services practices that are utilizing data transfer tools such as transaction pro and autofy to import data from applications that don’t have apis into accounting products. we see this as the first step firms are taking toward machine learning or robotic process automation (rpa), which we see as necessary precursors before integrating the ai tools.

as the profession is also transitioning to a “consultative/advisor” role, there has also been a surge of adoption in the data visualization tools such as tableau, qlik and microsoft power bi, with both cch and xcm adopting the latter as their reporting tools. we see microsoft power bi being the eventual winner within the accounting firms.

from a technology perspective, the march to cloud applications and hosted providers has become the de facto standard, with fewer and firms maintaining their own networks except to run those applications that are not yet available in the cloud (audit/tax engagement binders). this has impacted traditional it staffing in firms where “it middle management” (network administrators) are being disintermediated as the processes requiring their skillset is taken over by cloud applications.

posted on january 9, 2020