Should accountants learn data analytics?

hands up if you've heard the term data analytics in conjunction with the accounting profession we're hearing it more and more in terms of the skills we think accounting students and accounting graduates need to succeed in the profession so in today's video I'm going to talk about what is data analytics why it's important for your career and free tools software and courses that you can use to skill up in this particular area let's get into it [Music] hi everyone dr. Amanda white here for those who are returning hi it's great to see you again for those who are new my name is dr. amanda white i'm a chartered accountant i have a PhD in behavioral audit i teach accounting and audit at university and i'm a real advocate and i'm really passionate about accounting as a career and one that's open to everyone so today i wanted to talk about something that is really important for accounting students and graduates all those looking to come into the accounting professional bone up their skills in the accounting profession and that is data analytics now what exactly is data analytics it's really using financial and non-financial data to help companies make better decisions now you might be thinking hang on a second haven't we already been using data in accounting forever that's absolutely true because we've been using data in the accounting profession since Pacioli all right since the time of double-entry bookkeeping we've been using accounting data and non accounting data to help firms make decisions now why are we talking about data analytics today when we've been doing it all this time well really it's the significant volume of data we're certainly hearing the words big data or if you're in the night united states or north america you'll hear big data that is really what's changing things we're collecting data and it's accessible about all sorts of different things buying habits web browsing habits where we're making our phone calls what we click on on Instagram what goes in our shopping carts so there is so much data available now because of the computerization of systems now I'm gonna put a link here to a great video by Professor Julie Smith David she is one of the pioneers really in this area she was talking about Big Data and professor bill McCarthy from Michigan State University have been talking about computerization and accounting data and all of that for a really long time but Julie has a really great video from an American accounting Association seminar a number of years ago about big data as the Americans call it and why it's always been a thing for us as accounts so for accountants this is nothing new we're just learning about different contexts in which it can apply now of course in terms of study options you could choose to do an entire degree on data science data analytics if you're going into that data science data analytics area there's certainly lots of programming so most data analytics courses will get into programming in things like R and Python to be able to analyze data but what I want to talk about today is really more the smaller scale free stuff that you can get into now we can use all sorts of things and tools for data analytics the simplest one is Excel everybody knows Excel alright filiz you know Excel there's certainly lots of channels on YouTube where you can learn about Excel but Excel is probably the basic one in terms of tools and free courses with Excel I'm gonna link you to Wendy teets she is a professor at Kent State University in the u.s. highway Li she and I are friends she has a great little youtube tutorial about how you can use Excel for data analytics and check out her website as well there's plenty of information there about how you can use to learn Excel for data analytics yourself on top of excel is a tool called power bi and that's developed by Microsoft now power bi on your desktop a single individual license is absolutely free and if through your institution or through your professional association you've got access to LinkedIn learning which is the new name for lynda.com there's probably plenty of free courses that you can do inside LinkedIn learning that will help you learn power bi there's also some power bi for accountants that are out there I'll put everything that I've found that's useful for you in the description so that you can go and check it out but power bi is free it's really just an amped-up version of excel another option that's really popular these days is a product called tableau now tableau does cost money but if you're a student or you're an educator you'll get a free 12-month license by writing to Tablo providing them with your student details and then they also have some training and tools and free courses that you can do to learn Tablo and its power as a data analytic and data visualization tool another piece of software that's really common in the audit space when it comes to data analytics is a tool called idea an idea is not new idea was a tool when I was an auditor more than 20 years ago and certainly beefed up a lot since then but it is the original data analytics tool for audit besides the proprietary software owned by the big four and the second tier firms idea is not easily available some universities will have licenses to idea through their institution but there is the ability to actually contact idea and the company that makes ID a case where if you're a student to be able to get access to a student license and free student training resources that's something worth looking into if you're specifically looking at a tool that a lot of audit firms to use the next tool I have for you for learning about data analytics is an absolutely free is it a free virtual internship through KPMG and a program called inside Sherpa you'll get an idea of KPMG's data analytics methodology it's a free online course you get a little certificate of completion at the end and that's open to everyone anyone you don't need any special software for it it's all contained within the website inside Sherpa offers virtual internships on all sorts of different things so that you can try and gain some experience if you can't actually get off campus and you're a student or you can't get into an audit practice now that's not quite the same as real hands-on internships but it's a really good place to start the very last item I have for you in the free ways to learn data analytics is PwC's Coursera course on data analytics now that course is free to audit and what it just means you can sit in do the exercises but you don't get any feedback of course if you want to do the assessments you can pay for that to get a small micro credential type of certificate that will show up on your LinkedIn learning why is it important that we learn about data analytics well we know that data is going to drive more and more decision-making it's going to go into algorithms that will help predict while we need to buy where we need to go public transport schools health help us identify a disease outbreaks so a dotter and the use of data is becoming ingrained into everything that we do every day so from an accounts perspective understanding how to use the data we have access to to help improve corporate decision making or non corporate decision making if you're working for a social enterprise that is going to be really important because more and more of accounting is becoming automated we know that a lot of graduate positions are sort of shrinking in terms of numbers because of the automation of accounting so we need to find other ways that we can add value to the business and one of those ways is using data to help us tell a story what has been happening where should we go what could we do so data analytics is going to be one of those really important tools for the future now if you have any other good free resources for learning data analytics I'd love to hear about them and I'll add them to my list here but as always if you haven't already consider subscribing to get all the latest news and accounting content if you thought the video was useful really appreciate a thumbs up you can catch me on social media on Facebook and Instagram as Amanda loves to audit on Twitter as Amanda's ordered because I can't use Amanda loves to order it it's too long but otherwise I will see you next time you

Channel: AmandaLovesToAudit

Views: 50,561

Keywords: auditing, assurance, auditor, audit, data analytics, accountant, accounting, data, data analysis, data visualisations

Id: 7snFLFY5zZA

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019

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• Original Title: Should accountants learn data analytics?
• Author: AmandaLovesToAudit
• Description: What is data analytics? What should accountants know about it? I share 6 free ways to learn some data analytics basics. Have a great free resource to help ...
• Youtube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7snFLFY5zZA