Finance Analyst - Advance Role of Accountant in Data Science

Rapid growth of digital technology and innovation has significant impact to the role of accountant, while strong financial and accounting background are no longer sufficient to be added-value quality in the organization. Due to the advancement of accounting technologies, some of the task fully perform by automated system, thus shifting the role of new accountant into higher responsibility, to assist and advise business decision for the organization and client.

This skill set includes professional skepticism, decision judgement and critical thinking skills. The rise of data revolution creates new path and massive opportunity to the field of finance functions and accounting professionals. Data has become new valuable resources for organization, which help to create value and growth for business, thus increase the market demand for accounting professional with data science and analytical skill.

Accountant already work with data analytic output to evaluate business performance within the accounting principles and methods. They apply the conventional method to identify trend and unusual items that require further investigation.

However, the new age accountant is responsible to expand these knowledges further with the ability to understand, process, interpret and provide valuable insight from the masses amount of data that contribute to the success of both of their client and firm. Instead of just an accountant, they need to become a Financial Analyst, who can turn the massive financial data into valuable insight that help the company to make business decision.

The realm of data science, data analytics can be categories into four main spectrums, which are a) Descriptive Analytic; b) Diagnostic Analytic; c) Predictive Analytic; and d) Prescriptive Analytic. Thus, in a data-driven world, the new age accountant should acquire multiple skill in these domains of knowledge to remain competitive in the industry. Those skill are including statistics & probability, computer programming, machine learning, data analytics and business intelligence with visualization.

However, traditional education in accounting and financial doesn't include domain that necessary for data science skill, thus lead to talent shortage. Accounting or financial professional with data science knowledge and analytics skill will be the valuable talent and asset to the organization, whereby their skill could be applicable for a) credit risk assessment; and b) fraud detection in accounting report.

Programming is compulsory when it comes to build a machine learning model. As an analyst, having a good knowledge and understanding in machine learning, together with building a model for predictive analytics will make you more competitive and advantages. However, any task related with programming could be a challenge for someone who has very little or no programming background. But, do not worry anymore. The rapid innovation in digital technology has make programming without coding is possible with KNIME Analytics Platform.

KNIME Analytic Platform is an open source tool to develop a program using visual programming approach. Visual programming is a method of programming with drag and drop approach, without the need of writing coding script. It is very suitable for non-programmer to learn, apply and deploy data science and machine learning into their project.

The data science course that I offer is designed and custom-tailored for accountant and financial professional. Data science could be difficult for someone who has no programming background, especially for data processing and machine learning with KNIME Analytics Platform.

Thus, instead of train our client with conventional programming approach, we develop a complete data science and machine learning course module using visual programming technique, where NO coding requires for the course. We used powerful open source visual programming tools, KNIME in our training module. Moreover, our training hands-on activities comprises of real-business problem for specific niche, in this case is accounting and finance.

I also use YouTube as my knowledge sharing platform in the field of data science. You can subscribe to my channel to be notified for my latest education video. Click this link to be directed to my YouTube channel.