33 Tech Trends CPAs Need to Know

What are YOUR top tech issues?

The AICPA has released a survey, asking members to prioritize into its annual list of  “Top Ten Techs” the technology issues that will have the most impact in 2009.

How many of these are you ready for… ?

1. Audit Process Improvement — This initiative is about auditing, process documentation, and the utilization of appropriate tools for continuous monitoring and collaborative auditing. Strategies include continuous auditing, management control systems, continuous control monitoring, and remote auditing.
2. Business Continuity Management and Disaster Recovery Planning — Business Continuity Management and Disaster Recovery Planning are the holistic processes organizations use to mitigate the risks to systems and people when unexpected events occur and include the maintenance of a documented plan that is periodically tested. This process includes identification, prioritization, and documentation of key systems, associated risks, and individuals responsible for ensuring the maintenance of these key systems.
3. Business Intelligence — Business Intelligence solutions supply information to decision makers at all levels using tools such as dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), data warehouses, and proactive alerts.
4. Business Process Improvement, Work Flow and Process Exception Alerts — Business Process Improvement initiatives assist with controlling and documenting processes across the organization, most commonly in accounting or content management (paperless) applications. Transaction processing and audit trails are being replaced with automated processes, work flow, exception alerts, and electronic authorizations.
5. Collaboration – Information Portals — Portals enable employees, customers, vendors, and other contacts to securely access and share information and documents. Collaboration tools allow multiple users to work together on files of all kinds.
6. Conforming to Assurance and Compliance Standards — All organizations must have a strategy to ensure that appropriate external and internal standards are met in a timely manner.  Financial systems must be aligned to provide accurate, timely, and secure information that meet all reporting requirements.
7. Customer Relationship Management — Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the process and software that provide a comprehensive view of a relationship and enables organizations to manage all aspects of the interaction with this relationship and to focus resources on the highest-value relationships. Applications include contact management, calendaring, practice management, sales history, email integration, workflow integration, and campaign marketing and may incorporate sales force automation, call center technologies, Web site integration, as well as integration with internal applications (time and billing) and personal information managers (e.g., Microsoft Outlook).
8. Document, Forms, Content and Knowledge Management — Document, Forms, Content and Knowledge Management (the “paperless” office) is the process of electronically capturing, indexing, storing, protecting, searching, retrieving, managing, and controlling information using scanning, forms recognition, optical character recognition (OCR), centralized data repositories, and the management of PDFs and other document formats. Knowledge management brings structure and control to information, allowing organizations to harness the intellectual capital contained in the underlying data.
9. Electronic Confirmations — Transactions and account balances are electronically confirmed to third parties using a range of methods from email, automatic database to database pinging, XML confirmatory dialects, and confirmatory extranets electronic media. With the largest bank in the United States responding only to electronic confirmation requests submitted via a designated third-party service provider, auditors and their clients must prepare for the eventual transition from paper confirmations.
10. Electronic Data Retention Strategy — Electronic Data Retention Strategies involve technologies that enable appropriate archiving and retrieval of key information over a given (statutory) period of time. Strategies include policies and processes to ensure destruction of information from storage and archival media in a timely and consistent manner, as well as the impact of eDiscovery rules and regulations regarding retained data.
11. Enhanced Business Reporting – XBRL — The Enhanced Business Reporting framework is used by organizations to enhance the value of information provided to investors and other key stakeholders. Because the information reported is broad, focuses on the future, is comparable, and is transparent, it is more understandable, meaningful, and useful than traditional financial reporting. XBRL provides a standardized categorization for accounting data and is used to provide valid comparisons among organizations.
12. Enterprise System Management — Enterprise System Management involves managing systems effectively and efficiently using remote tools. This initiative is about the appropriate deployment, control, and support of all systems.
13. Green IT Movement — There are social, market, and economic pressures, as well as a government push for businesses to conserve and to “think green.” Organizations that “go green” set the tone from the top by developing an environmental policy statement and incorporating strategies to meet environmental goals. As a result, purchasing practices are modified and lifecycle programs, recycling programs and technologies such as virtualization, Energy Star, and thin computing are implemented, and individual behavior changes are encouraged
14. Identity and Access Management — Identity and Access Management involves the implementation of physical, technical, and administrative controls that limit access to company resources to authorized persons. A challenge exists with achieving easy access by authorized users while making resources inaccessible to unauthorized users.
15. Impact of Business / Social Networking — Business and social networking is a way people communicate about who they are, where they’ve been, where they are going, and who they link with. This networking leverages technologies by combining pictures, words, sounds, and video so that people and groups of peoples can achieve on-going, engaging personal and professional relationships without face-to-face contact.
16. Impact of International Financial Reporting Standards — The growing acceptance of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as a basis for U.S. financial reporting represents a fundamental change for the U.S. accounting profession and creates the demand for new data, modified calculations, and changes in reporting. Information systems need modification and this transition could represent the next major challenge for financial systems and associated technologies.
17. Improved Application and Data Integration — Effective decision support and business intelligence systems rely on information systems which “talk to each other” seamlessly and where information is readily available in a form that expedites business decision making. Disparate systems continue to exist within organizations and duplicate databases reside within these multiple systems.
18. Information Security Management — Proper Information Security Management protects the integrity and confidentiality of information in the custody of an organization and reduces the risk of information being compromised. It is an integrated, systematic approach that coordinates people, policies, standards, processes, and controls used to safeguard critical systems and information from internal and external security threats.
19. Inventory and Asset Tracking Technology — An organization’s asset base represents large investments and must, therefore, be carefully managed. Inventory and Asset Tracking Technology includes Barcodes, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), inventory controls that track demand, and fixed asset/infrastructure systems.
20. IT Governance — The goal of IT governance is to achieve the accountability necessary to maximize business value. As a subset of organizational governance, IT governance ensures the strategic alignment of IT-related plans, initiatives, and resource procurement with overall organizational goals.
21. Mergers and Acquisition Technology Issues — Aligned closely to merging organizations and cultures, application and infrastructure integration poses a real challenge, requiring organizations and cultures to intersect in conversion projects related to technology and financial applications. Assuring alignment of business strategies and tactics in the resulting organization is a key consideration.
22. Mobile and Remote Computing — Enabling people to work from anywhere and at any time is the goal of Mobile and Remote Computing. Technologies used in mobile and remote computing include Terminal Services, Citrix, Virtual Desktop Interface, Cellular broadband and WiMAX, and remote control applications. A paperless office environment is essential to support mobile users who want to access and collaborate on digital documents from remote locations.
23. Moving Beyond Microsoft Office 2003 — There is a new generation of productivity applications available from Microsoft and others, including Office 2007 and the coming Office 14, Google Apps, Zoho Office, Open Office, and Lotus Symphony. This initiative is about moving on from older versions of Microsoft Office to the current version of the Microsoft Office or a competing application.
24. Moving Beyond Microsoft XP — There is a new generation of operating systems available from Microsoft and others, including Microsoft Vista and the coming Windows 7, Apple OS X, and Linux and other open source communities offered as alternative choices. This initiative is about moving beyond Windows 2000 and XP to improve the user experience and rely less on the OS standards that have dominated in the past.
25. Privacy Management — The right to privacy is a commonly assumed fact, and failure to protect sensitive information can cause serious damage to an organization’s reputation and subject it to legal penalties. Privacy Management involves the strategies used to protect the privacy of an organization’s records about resources, restricted assets, and personal information so that this information cannot be released to or accessed by unauthorized subjects.
26. Secure Data File Storage, Transmission and Exchange — Stored data can be altered to commit fraud, intercepted by an unscrupulous person en route and altered, and laptops storing vast amounts of confidential information can be lost or stolen. Strategies that can mitigate these risks include encrypted storage disks and laptop hard drives, message digests used to identify altered data, digital certificates, secure channels using Secure Socket Layering (SSL), or Transport Layer Security (TLS) for purchase transactions, and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which allow for more permanent secure data channels.
27. Secure Money — There is substantial security risk involved in placing sensitive organization information, bank data, or credit card records onto the Internet. The goal of Secure Money is to achieve secure electronic transmission of funds from one subject to another using electronic funds transfer (EFT), remote deposit to a financial institution from a subject’s remote office, secure electronic transaction (SET), etc. using, (among others) digital certificates, Secure Socket Layers (SSLs), Transport Layer Security (TLS), or Virtual Private Network (VPN) technologies.
28. Tablet Computing — Tablet Computing uses hand writing recognition that is becoming more accurate and new hardware formats that give users more options. The screens on some versions are exceptionally hardened and able to be used in direct sunlight, avoiding most first-generation issues with this technology.
29. Training and Competency — Knowledgeable and competent employees who address issues with confidence are a key differentiator among competitors. As technology develops and is in a constant state of change, training methods must also change. On-site training has given way to computer-based training (CBT), pod casts, web casts, distance learning, etc.
30. Unified Communications — Communication services continues to be an expensive undertaking for most organizations and include audio, fax, text, instant messages, images, video, VoIP, cellular, Web conferencing, whiteboarding, and email. Changes are occurring in the number of communications providers and the integrated approach to delivery, subsequently reducing the number of providers needed to handle the complex array of communications.
31. Virtual Consulting, Remote Auditing and Client Services — Virtual Consulting, Remote Auditing, and Client Services involve the delivery of higher, value-added services using virtual teams without geographic restrictions. This method of delivering service using Internet-based communications technology (text, voice, video, interactive cooperation, and desktop sharing) changes the nature of the business process.
32. Virtualization — Virtualization is running computing resources in an emulated and consolidated environment. Server, desktop, storage and application virtualization are all methods that allow computing resources to be installed, used, and supported more efficiently.
33. Web-deployed Applications — This initiative incorporates “Cloud Computing”, Web-deployed applications, “Software as a Service” (SaaS), applications hosted by 3rd party providers (Application Service Provider-ASP), and allows end-users to access and manage data directly from the Internet as a strategy, in lieu of accessing or maintaining applications and information on local machines, servers, and networks.

Take a look at the 2008 list here.

Posted on November 21, 2008