Accountancy is changing – and so is the job description

Accountants have long been an indispensable fixture within the world of business – but their role within it is changing.

Accounting teams today are tasked with far more than bookkeeping or managing payroll. In our increasingly data-driven world, they are also expected to provide strategic insight and contribute to decision-making processes.

This shift has increased the demand for business analysts, and data analysts with a finance background, as these skills can function as a bridge between accountancy and technology. These hybrid roles are becoming increasingly valuable to employers; in fact, business analyst is now the number-one external job posting in accountancy. 

Highly sought-after

Given the growing relevance of this skillset, professionals with both accountancy and business analysis skills may be particularly valuable to smaller firms, says Paul Newell, Operations Director, at LHH Recruitment Solutions UK&I. “SMEs are typically looking for some level of analytical skills when filling their accountancy roles,” he says. “They may not have the budget to be able to hire a full-time person, so they tend to include elements of the analyst role as a component of the accountant position.” 

Recruiting candidates with this evolving skillset will cost employers a little extra. “If companies want to recruit higher-functioning professionals with business analytical skills, they're going to have to pay a higher price,” Newell adds. “Companies must think about how they can significantly increase the economic incentives and benefits for these candidates to get their attention because they are very sought-after right nowd.”   
 

From data entry to data science

Data has become crucial to the smooth running of modern businesses. It’s used in everything from measuring and evaluating business performance and financial health to informing decision-making. That’s why the skills needed to manage, analyse and use data are becoming increasingly valuable to employers – and, by extension, to the type of candidates they are looking for. 

Accounting and finance professionals don’t need to be coding experts, but it is also becoming increasingly desirable to have a degree of knowledge about the main tools used in presenting, analysing and managing data. 

The new toolkit

Those tools include the programming languages most often used to query databases, such as Python – which, happily, is considered one of the easiest coding languages for beginners to learn – and SQL, another powerful and widely used language on which many existing accounting software and systems already rely. 

Translating the results of data analysis into a format which is easily understandable by decision-makers also relies on software. Tableau and Microsoft’s Power BI are the most popular data visualisation tools on the market today, and again, proficiency with them is becoming increasingly important for candidates in this sector. 

If you’re thinking about changing roles in the near future and these skills aren’t yet part of your repertoire, it might be a good idea to start brushing up. The changes taking place in accounting and finance might present challenges – but there are enormous opportunities for the taking, too.

For more insights into the current trends shaping the accounting and finance sector, read our latest white paper.