The Day After Tomorrow: Will Accounting Profession Disappear?

With the deepening of informatization application of financial system, the work of accounting personnel has changed from the "old three types" of salary, account book and report to the "new three types" of fund management, budget management and cost management. " Wang Wenjing, the chairman of UFIDA, who was also a financial person at the 4th National Accounting Informatization Annual Conference held in Taiyuan not long ago, was very impressed. With the continuous development of new applications of IT tools in the field of traditional financial management, traditional financial accounting and management accounting are undergoing a profound transformation. With the continuous penetration of IT tools in the traditional financial field, will accounting, which has been active for thousands of years, die one day, or the day after tomorrow? Five years ago, a survey of 1400 CFOs conducted by a company called RHI Management Resources showed that when CFOs were asked "Which of the following areas do you think will change the most in CFO functions in the next five years", 39% answered "play a more active role in the technical information system", and 26% answered "more strategic plans and decision-making", 16% responded to "increase cooperation and coordination with other departments", 15% responded to "expand leadership and management functions", and 5% responded to "uncertainty". The establishment of management software and information platform such as ERP and BPM not only greatly improves the working efficiency of CFOs, but also provides them with a series of reliable tools, enabling them to devote more energy to strategic planning and decision-making. Yang Zhounan believed that the computerization of accounting, which was popularized in China 20 years ago, not only enabled financial personnel to get rid of tedious manual labor, but more importantly, it enabled them to spend more time doing higher-level management analysis work; On the other hand, with the transition of the state from a planned economy to a market economy, enterprises have become independent entities responsible for their own profits and losses. In order to ensure their sustainable development, they must strengthen budget and capital control. In the process of this transformation, informatization as a tool has promoted the realization of this demand, enabling timely feedback of plan implementation information and business operation information, so as to achieve timely control in the event and retrospective after the event. The plan and budget can form a closed-loop virtuous circle. In the external environment of global economic integration, the risks of enterprises have increased sharply. "Capital is everything" has been widely recognized, and the CFO class has called for it. Chinese CFOs in transition can no longer avoid the impact of the use of information technology. This impact is not negative, but further promotes the transformation of CFOs' own roles and positioning. However, it is worth noting that at the Fourth National Accounting Informatization Annual Conference, from financial computerization 20 years ago to today's "accounting informatization system", we only heard word games playing with concepts. If the traditional financial accounting based on accounting cannot be broken through for thousands of years only because it is a financial calculation tool, then in the field of management accounting in China, can we not have any innovation in the past 20 years? The huge gap between the theoretical and practical circles can only get bigger and bigger, and can't be bridged at all? According to the traditional understanding of finance, CFOs in China are just the head of accounting and only responsible for managing bookkeeping business, mostly focusing on earnings per share, data recording, budget and internal control; In the information age, CFOs no longer focus on bookkeeping business, but should focus on data analysis, how to create and add value for the company, adapt to changes in the outside world through flexible analysis and rapid response, pay attention to shareholder value, rational performance, effective resource allocation and utilization, and timely manage risks, Create value for the enterprise on the basis of high-quality human resources and business operation, in which IT management tools such as BI and KM have played an indispensable role. As early as 20 years ago, Yang Zhounan's father, Mr. Yang Jiwan, and the late Mr. Yan Dawu, had been supporters and advocates of the theory of accounting management activities. They believed that accounting not only provided and reflected information, but also participated in management, such as supporting the company's strategic decision-making from the perspective of financial feasibility analysis. "The financial business integration in the IT era is very important, because there are valuable accounting information flows in any process of the enterprise." Yang Zhounan thinks so. From the accounting in the planned economy era to the financial management being put on the agenda in the 1980s, to the 1990s, the surging tide of financial informatization, the Asian financial crisis, the emergence of a large number of group enterprises, the September 11 and Enron events all posed many new challenges to China's traditional financial management ideas. It may be a bit pedantic to think about such issues at such a turning point, But it is also thought-provoking: IT systems are providing new tools for traditional accounting functions such as reflection, supervision and control. Is there a future for traditional accounting?