Shift in Accountants Skillset

Advancements in technology have had a significant impact on the accounting profession and many are concerned with how automation is gradually replacing an accountant’s role. However, rather than looking at how technology will lead to an accountant’s job becoming redundant, it in fact represents a chance for accountants to adapt and get ahead of the game. To attract and retain the right talent, firms must have the ability to offer top notch technology to meet the needs and expectations of the employees, creating efficiency for them to generate more value creation activities.

Understanding the importance of the role technology plays, we formed the firm’s Digital Research and Development (R&D) team for spearheading development in new technological growth areas like Robotics Process Automation (RPA), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Today, we are proud to say that 3E Accounting is the pioneer robotics accounting firm.

Adapting to Technology

With technology being the main focus of change in the accounting profession, a good grasp of technology will allow accounting professionals to better adapt to their new roles. The use of technology drives efficiency and reduces human error, resulting in an overall increase of a firm’s productivity. By integrating processes with cloud-based systems and using automation to replace manual repetitive work, accountants can reduce time on tasks completion and better focus on value creation activities. For example, accountants can now concentrate on performing advisory work with the aid of using automation to replace manual repetitive work such as bookkeeping. Accountants can also take on more strategic roles and actively contribute to tasks which increases a firm’s productivity and business growth

Essential Skills

?The shift away from manual repetitive work has also resulted in a shift in requisite skillsets. It is inherent to be able to carry out in-depth data analytics, such as analysing results provided by automation and present these findings to clients afterwards. Advisory roles also call for soft skills such as critical thinking, negotiation and problem solving skills. Accountants must also be proficient and comfortable with implementation of technology, ranging from basic skills like using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, to more advanced expertise such as using cloud-based services. 

3E Accounting’s Implementation of Technology

As part of 3E Accounting’s digital journey, our R&D team has incorporated a digital master plan and completed the firm’s digital transformation within 15 months. Corporate services provided by 3E Accounting including company incorporation, accounting, taxation, human resource and secretarial service can now be entirely processed digitally. This digital transformation has improved our productivity by 50%.

What is more, to support the utilisation of automation to improve productivity and enhance value creation for both our internal and external stakeholders, the firm has been in the process of researching and developing intelligent robots. We have successfully developed the Financial Report Robot and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Robot, and will be launching the Tax Robot and Bookkeeping Robot over the next few years. The deployment of robots helped save time from manual repetitive tasks, enabling our staffs to focus on greater value added tasks. For example, the custom-built RPA Robot can execute retrieval of data, document numbers and forms while selecting the correct Year of Assessment and solve the Captcha with accuracy without any manual human inputs. The RPA Robot is also programmed to obtain the clients’ Document Identification Number (DIN) and compile them in an excel file automatically.

As our staffs are well equipped with imperative expertise, they are able to direct their attention on analysing the output generated by automation to enhance their decision making and advisory work competence. 3E Accounting also aids in providing useful resources for our staffs to provide superior services for clients.

With the belief that technology will continue to transform businesses, we have invested over S$2 million in researching and developing IT infrastructure and will continue to explore new technological growth areas to make certain we will always stay far ahead of our industry peers and rapidly expand our client base and product offerings.