The Future of Accounting: How Will Digital Transformation Impact the Sector?

Abstract

The growing dissemination of digital technologies has had an incomparable impact on many dimensions of today’s civilisation. Digital transformation (DT) redefined the industrial structures and reinvented business models. Hence, in the face of Industry 4.0, financial and accounting services face new threats, challenges, and opportunities. How do the business players in the accounting sector perceive this phenomenon? This paper aims to answer this question by following a qualitative and exploratory approach, applied to three case studies, using semi-structured interviews. The study shows that although digital transformation in Portuguese small and medium-sized accounting service enterprises is just starting, Industry 4.0 technologies, optical character recognition (OCR), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the cloud were the technologies singled out by respondents. Resistance to change, organisational culture and price seem to be the main barriers to DT in accounting. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of accounting and accountants in organisations and society in the context of the digital era. Moreover, it provides practical insights into the potential relationship between technological (specifically digital) development and labour market dynamics for accounting professionals.