3E Accounting Exploiting Big Data
Big data and analytics have been the hot topic lately and when analytical techniques have been effectively applied to big data, businesses can benefit from the value it created. Knowing what big data means and how to utilize them is essential for businesses to improve their decision making and operations. Having the great foresight that big data will be the future trend, 3E Accounting founder Lawrence Chai formed the firm’s Digital Research and Development (DR&D) team to lead development in new technological growth areas like robotics business automation (RPA), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), all to complement the use of big data.
Rise of Big Data
A big misconception about big data is that everyone assumed it is just talking about the volume of data. However, big data is not just merely about volume, it is also about the velocity and variety of data. The shift in big data is driven by the growth in computing power, new sources of data and infrastructure for knowledge creation. The vast growth in computing power and storage makes it possible to collect and process an entire data set, regardless of the size and complexity. Furthermore, the adoption of cloud computing supports the extensive use of big data, businesses can access the data whenever needed. Data can be retrieved and processed from many new sources such as the Internet and social media, both of which are made possible with the increase in computing power. New knowledge is created with sharing from various platforms that the digital infrastructure brings about. The digital infrastructure has enabled new types of knowledge sharing, such as open-source software, and this led to greater insights in data from places yet to be explored in the past.
Exploiting Big Data
The rise in big data allows businesses to use data in ways that were previously not viable. Big data can be used to help businesses make better decisions by giving businesses better insights, help businesses make a better prediction about the future and to automate tasks. With data being the centre of accounting work, businesses can generate more value from big data. This is especially useful where accountants can use the different sources of data and analytic tools to improve forecasting and provide business advisory services. Big data analytics concentrate on predicting future outcomes and integrating predictive models in business operations. With the availability of new data sources, businesses can make predictions in new areas and big data opens up new possibilities. With automation making a significant impact on the accounting profession, big data plays a part in using the predictive capabilities to automate tasks. With manual repetitive tasks like bookkeeping and data entry being automated, machine learning techniques will enable even more complex and less routine tasks to be automated. The new capabilities in data enable the accounting profession to improve their decision-making skills across businesses, using the big data to gain deeper insights and work on value creation activities.
How 3E Accounting Use Big Data
Embracing the growth of technology, 3E Accounting DR&D team developed a digital master plan as part of the firm’s digital journey, mapping out the business’s digital transformation. Within 15 months, the team successfully completed the digital transformation of 3E Accounting with all services offered to be fully processed digitally and the firm to go 100% paperless and fully digital. Following the trend of big data, 3E Accounting is fully prepared with their digital transformation and investing in technology like cloud-based solutions.
Aiming to make full use of big data to provide better services for clients, 3E Accounting has been researching and developing robots to automate tasks. Two robots, namely the Financial Report robot and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) robot have been completed, and the Tax robot and Bookkeeping robot is under development. Using automation, 3E Accounting’s employees are able to direct their time to other value-added activities like financial advisory work from the manual repetitive tasks. 3E Accounting’s employees also can utilize the results produced by automation to make better decisions and derive greater insights.
Today, 3E Accounting is the pioneer firm in Singapore to adopt robotics technology following the trend of automation shaping the accounting profession
