<div>With new markets opening, new standards being adopted, and with an ongoing shift in economic power there are many challenges and opportunities for finance professionals to deal with. But what do my colleagues in the world of finance and accountancy see as the biggest concerns for the future? What openings and threats have they identified?</div><div> </div><div>From research we have undertaken around the world, there are a number of challenges and opportunities which they have identified. The key issue for them was the recognition that they need to embrace an enlarged strategic and commercial role, as there are more opportunities for them to play a bigger role across all aspects of corporate decision making from strategy formulation through to defining new business models.</div><div> </div><div>Everyone involved in the profession also needs to accept that it needs to be seen to be addressing clear public concerns. There is a perception that the accountancy profession could do more to highlight and prevent everything from small-scale financial irregularities through to the major systemic failures that helped cause the global financial crisis and ensuing economic uncertainty.</div><div> </div><div>One way that we could contribute to greater awareness and certainty is to provide holistic reports on businesses, which acknowledge the complexity of modern business and encompass financial and non-financial indicators of a firm's financial status and potential.</div><div> </div><div>Given the increasing globalisation of business - there is also a need for finance professionals to master the technical, language and cultural challenges of cross-border operations.</div><div> </div><div>The diverse range of demands and impacts on the profession is forcing a rethink of everything from training and development through to the type of people being recruited.</div><div> </div><div>Future finance professionals not only have to keep up with changes to financial rules and regulations, but also with technology.</div><div> </div><div>Businesses today must have their 'technology radars' consistently switched on, scouring and weighing up new and up-and-coming technologies are opportunities that can achieve competitive value. While I have highlighted some challenges for the profession, there will also be many opportunities.</div><div> </div><div>For example, the rise of 'big data' demands the sort of structural and analytical skills that are commonplace in accounting. Research has already shown that companies that adopt 'data-driven' decision-making methods can outperform their less enterprising peers; there are many easily accessed opportunities waiting for companies that use big data to their advantage, and accountants could be the ones to identify this. </div><div> </div><div>There will be challenges, such as the need for high-quality data, security and privacy, and legal issues, but big data could become a very big opportunity for many accountants if they are able to: explore new ways to manage, analyse, and extract value from big data; ensure that data protection legislation is followed and data is used ethically; apply the profession's analytical and critical skills to establish a broader more strategic remit; use this broader business perspective to inform and identify the questions big data can most usefully answer and monitor the specialist software and systems that are emerging and learn how to exploit them.</div><div> </div><div><em>The author, Mohammed Sajid Khan, is head of international development at ACCA </em></div><div> </div>
