New Report in Big Data Raises Questions Regarding the Finance Profession

A new report released today by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, ACCA, has posed quite a question. It states that finance professionals and accountants should be asking themselves how, as opposed to 'what extent', will be business world be impacted by so called big data? The ACCA report was done in collaboration with IMA, the Institute of Management Accountants.

Entitled “Big Data; Its Power and Perils”, the report demonstrated the potential that businesses of every size, and well as regulators and governments, have in harnessing the wealth of unregulated information. They also, however, made clear the potential ethical and legal pitfalls.

The ACCA and IMA conducted a recent survey, and 62% of the respondents indicated that big data was massively important to the future of the business world. They went as far to say that it gave savvy businesses the potential to get an edge on their competitors. The variety and volume of data which governments and businesses can collect is increasing at an alarming rate, thus providing a veritable treasure trove of free information.

The ability to take this information and organise it, make sense of it and analyse it is what is at the core of current substantial investments which are being made by corporations. Faye Chua is the head of future research at ACCA, and she has said that it is not a case of when will big data become important as it already is. The real potential lies in having the ability to analyse it and put the information to good use.

She added that big data represented one of the biggest chances which the finance profession has seen recently. Using analytical skills, they can provide their senior management with updates in real time on a much wider range of variables, and this will place them at the very heart of strategic business.