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Making use of data analytics can help accountants to add value to their client relationships by highlighting opportunities, weaknesses and areas to drive efficiency for small and medium business clients, according to a range of data experts.
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Data analytics a value booster for business clients
09 August 2019
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9 minute read
Speaking at Intuit’s recent Industry Leaders Dinner in Sydney, PwC head of innovation and ventures Trent Lund said that by making use of data, accountants could help business clients take the guesswork out of their next venture or strategic pivot.
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“Most business leaders are somewhat entrepreneurial; they’re taking a gamble and most of them have to trust their gut instinct, but that is increasingly not enough,” Mr Lund said.
“What big data is allowing some businesses to do is not just make gut-based decisions but get right down to that level of specificity — this has been true of the marketing world for some time, but the reality is treasure troves also lie within your back office and your financial data.”
Hot Toast founder and director Sarah Lawrence agreed that there was increasing demand among her creative industry clients for data-driven conversations about how to accurately plan sales and marketing drives.
“What we are finding is there’s a real hunger to bring all these data points together to understand the story the data’s telling us — so driving efficiencies, looking at the pipeline, looking at the CRM system and the marketing data and how that relates to the financial data,” she said.
“It gives us such great insights and really pushes that advisory journey with our clients so they can drive efficiencies and put more money towards the bottom end.”
Mr Lund added that in order to successfully sell data analytics as an add-on for clients, accounting teams needed to clearly agree about the objective of the project upfront and be able to demonstrate the value it was adding to the client’s business over time.
“Plan what’s important because what often derails any type of data analytics job is it’s really interesting stuff and if the hourly rate didn’t matter we’d hang in there for years, but you need to get to outcomes quickly, so it helps to understand what you’re trying to look for,” he said.
When it came to hiring the right person to lead such projects, Deloitte chief data scientist Gavin Whyte said graduates with both accounting and IT backgrounds would be best able to understand both the technical and client service sides of data analytics.
“There’s a lot of grads coming out that have accounting degrees and coding sills, so it’s good to get a balance of multiple degrees,” he said.
“They are the ones that will really excel, understand the product and consumer and also be able to practically deliver the project.”
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