INTHEBLACK May 2022 - Magazine - Page 17
The tightening of rules
around data privacy and
security is likely to also
drive increased demand
for skills and expertise
related to information
governance frameworks.
Employers across all industries are desperate for
people who can analyse data, with demand up by
28 per cent. To them, accountants and finance
professionals with digital skills offer a speed
advantage.
“Everyone is trying to use data as best they can,
but delivering reports that allow management to do
real-time, or self-service reporting are far more
important,” says Paul Winter, partner in charge of
KPMG’s CFO Advisory business.
Winter is seeing demand for greater coding skills
in finance teams coming from another arena, too –
regulators.
“Regulators are asking to see more data,
particularly in the financial services space, banking
and superannuation,” he says.
COVID-19 CAUSES SKILLS CRISIS
Demand for specialist digital skills like Python, SAP,
ERP, Structured Query Language (SQL) and Scrum
has been growing for more than five years, but the
COVID-19 pandemic caused a real crunch, says
Andrew Brushfield, director at recruitment agency
Robert Half.
“Businesses have become increasingly reliant on
them over the past 18 months in order to agilely
analyse and respond to uncertain financial scenarios,”
he says.
“The talent to fill this demand is in short supply,
which is pushing employers to increase salary offers
for skilled professionals by 10 to 20 per cent.”
For small accounting firms, the pandemic has
meant clients needed to have their books up to date
to apply for government business grants such as
JobSeeker, or urgent bank loans. This created an
unexpected need for more hands on deck.
Exacerbating the skills shortage is the lack of
international migration, which shut off a vital
supply of talent, caution among skilled employees
about changing roles given the disruption of the
past year, and accelerated demand for digital skills
exceeding the ability of the domestic workforce to
develop them.
This highlights the need for employers to upskill
their existing workforce and think geographically
outside the box to plug the gaps, Brushfield says.
“In order to overcome skills shortages, employers
are increasingly turning to remote work to access
talent outside their geographic area. This report found
“DATA IS USELESS
UNLESS YOU CAN
PUT IT IN A WAY THAT
A CEO CAN USE TO
ADJUST STRATEGY
AND DECIDE WHICH
NEXT STEPS MAKE
SENSE. VERY FEW
ACCOUNTANTS CAN
PRESENT DATA IN
A COMPELLING
ENOUGH MANNER TO
MAKE SOMEONE ACT
ON IT.”
MICHAEL EDELSTEIN CPA,
FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING
RECRUITMENT SPECIALIST
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that there has been a 1924 per cent spike in
remote work postings for finance and accounting
professionals since the start of the pandemic,”
he says.
CODING VERSUS COMMUNICATION
However, not everyone wants an accountant who
can code, says Michael Edelstein CPA, a finance
and accounting recruitment specialist.
“To a degree these skills are in short supply, but
they’re only in demand for certain categories of
accountants in large corporations that are very
data-driven and want people who can extract the
numbers to enable decisions in real time.
“Small businesses actually want an accountant to
have business acumen rather than [to] be able to
code,” he says.
Edelstein says, while technical skills can be learned,
communication skills are an underrated talent among
finance and accounting professionals.
“You can be a Python master, but that means
nothing if you can’t communicate,” he says.
“Data is useless unless you can put it in a way that a
CEO can use to adjust strategy and decide which next
steps make sense. Very few accountants can present
data in a compelling enough manner to make
someone act on it.”
Winter agrees, adding that understanding data
visualisation software such as Power Bi and Tableau
is becoming increasingly important.
SKILLS OF THE FUTURE
The current demand for digital accounting skills will
lead to a range of other essential areas of expertise
among finance professionals.
Winter believes tightening rules around data
privacy and security are setting the scene for skills
around information governance frameworks to grow
in demand.
“If people have access to more data, we need to make
sure access is appropriate and people aren’t accessing it
for purposes they shouldn’t be,” Winter says.
However, Brushfield adds that the core emphasis for
future technical qualities likely to make it on to the
CPA skills list will be those that aid business planning
and revenue generation, drive the creation of new
products and services, facilitate the management and
utilisation of data, and create efficiencies and stronger
team collaboration for businesses.
intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au May 2022 17