ICAS ICAS logo

Quicklinks

  1. About Us

    Find out about who we are and what we do here at ICAS.

  2. Find a CA

    Search our directory of individual CAs and Member organisations by name, location and professional criteria.

  3. CA Magazine

    View the latest issues of the dedicated magazine for ICAS Chartered Accountants.

  4. Contact Us

    Get in touch with ICAS by phone, email or post, with dedicated contacts for Members, Students and firms.

Login
  • Annual renewal
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Find a CA
  1. About us
    1. Governance
  2. Members
    1. Become a member
    2. Newly qualified
    3. Manage my membership
    4. Benefits of membership
    5. Professional development
    6. CA Wellbeing
    7. Mentoring
    8. Member rewards
    9. Area networks
    10. International communities
    11. Get involved
    12. Top Young CAs
    13. Career breaks
    14. Proud to be a CA
    15. ICAS podcast
    16. Newly admitted members 2022
  3. CA Students
    1. Student information
    2. Student resources
    3. Learning requirements
    4. Learning updates
    5. Learning blog
    6. Totum Pro | Student discount card
  4. Become a CA
    1. How to become a CA
    2. Routes to becoming a CA
    3. CA Stories
    4. Find a training agreement
    5. Why become a CA
    6. Qualification information
    7. University exemptions
  5. Employers
    1. Become an Authorised Training Office
    2. Resources for Authorised Training Offices
    3. Professional entry
    4. Apprenticeships
  6. Find a CA
  7. ICAS events
    1. CA Summit
  8. CA magazine
  9. Insight series 2022
    1. Finance + Trust
    2. Finance + Technology
    3. Finance + EDI
    4. Finance + Mental Fitness
    5. Finance + Leadership
    6. Finance + Sustainability
  10. Professional resources
    1. Anti-money laundering
    2. Audit and assurance
    3. Brexit
    4. Charities
    5. Coronavirus
    6. Corporate and financial reporting
    7. Business and governance
    8. Ethics
    9. Insolvency
    10. ICAS Research
    11. Pensions
    12. Practice
    13. Public sector
    14. Sustainability
    15. Tax
  11. Regulation
    1. Complaints and sanctions
    2. Regulatory authorisations
    3. Guidance and help sheets
    4. Regulatory monitoring
  12. CA jobs
    1. Hays | A Trusted ICAS CA Jobs Partner
    2. CA jobs partner: Rutherford Cross
    3. Resources for your job search
    4. Advertise with CA jobs
    5. Director of Finance and Company Secretary | Glasgow
    6. Hays | A Trusted ICAS CA Jobs Partner
  13. Work at ICAS
    1. Business centres
    2. Meet our team
    3. Benefits
    4. Vacancies
    5. Imagine your career at ICAS
  14. Contact us
    1. Technical and regulation queries
    2. ICAS logo request

Embracing technology to become better CAs

  • LinkedIn (opens new window)
  • Twitter (opens new window)
By Gareth Lewis CA

8 October 2019

Embracing technology

  • Emerging technology can help businesses to run their day-to-day operations better.
  • CAs will be moving towards a 360-advisory role in the future, where they can unlock new insights.
  • Embracing technology can help CAs offer more to clients.

Gareth Lewis CA, CEO and co-founder of Delio, and the winner of the Top 100 Young CAs Technology category, talks about the changing profession and why CAs should embrace technology.

There are multiple technological developments confronting the accountancy profession, business and the wider public.

There has been a big shift across the accountancy profession in terms of embracing technology. For me, the evolution of technology within the profession is two-fold. On the one hand, you have the day-to-day side of it, while on the other hand we have technologies emerging that will transform the future of our profession. We are seeing this shift at Delio, where we have encountered a number of financial institutions that were using highly manual processes to run daily operations. Through our platform, we’ve been able to digitise these processes.

Technology helps ensure accuracy, consistency and, in general, reduces human error. It can help us become better CAs and offer more to our clients.

The profession is currently in a transition period where businesses will be moving towards a range of systems to help us run our daily operations – whether that’s to reduce risk, increase operational efficiency or broaden new revenue streams. This transition is easy for companies to embrace, and I see it happening across several industries.

At the same time, we’re seeing significant emerging technologies around machine learning and data science. CAs regularly encounter masses of data in various means and ways. As that data currently tends to sit in siloes, I envisage that we’ll see more developments and innovations that will be available for adoption by CAs, who can then use them to drive businesses forward and solve whatever challenges that exist.

Moving towards a 360-advisory role

As more manual processes, and administrative tasks, become automated by artificial intelligence, CAs will have to adapt how they work. CAs need to keep up with what clients want, the changes within the market and take time to learn more about the technologies that are there. CAs should speak with industry leaders within technology and learn from them how to adopt their technologies into the work of a CA.

I see CAs moving towards a 360-advisory role in the future, where they will be able to use their skills to analyse data, capture it, display it effectively and then unlock new insights.

I believe it is our responsibility as CAs to be a driver for change in our organisations and take ownership of emerging issues that are becoming increasingly more important to businesses.

Younger CAs have, by default, grown up in a world surrounded by technology and innovation and we are heavily reliant on it in several areas of our lives. I think we, as young CAs, need to look at where technology has helped, and solved challenges, in the wider aspects of life, and then consider how that can be applied to the CA role. We must think about how we can use technology to shape our work and meet our clients’ needs better, offering them more in the process.

I believe it is our responsibility as CAs to be a driver for change and evolution in our organisations and take ownership of emerging issues that are becoming increasingly more important to businesses.

Embracing change

One of the challenges we face when it comes to technology, is that businesses often move forward too quickly without having a good core foundation, base and infrastructure in place in which to work from. There’s always a risk that things can go too far which can affect a range of industries, as we saw historically with the dot.com crash.

While I think it is important not to jump on any technology trend, or adopt a “technology for technology’s sake” mentality, we shouldn’t shy away from the rate of change either. We should embrace it. Technology can help us work in real-time. It helps ensure accuracy, consistency and in general reduces human error. And it can help us become better CAs and offer more to our clients.

2022 06 memberrewards 2022 06 memberrewards
ICAS logo

Footer links

  • Contact us
  • Terms and conditions
  • Modern slavery statement
  • Privacy notice
  • CA magazine

Connect with ICAS

  • Facebook (opens new window) Facebook Icon
  • Twitter (opens new window) Twitter Icon
  • LinkedIn (opens new window) LinkedIn Icon
  • Instagram (opens new window) Instagram Icon

ICAS is a member of the following bodies

  • Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (opens new window) Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies logo
  • Chartered Accountants Worldwide (opens new window) Chartered Accountants Worldwide logo
  • Global Accounting Alliance (opens new window) Global Accounting Alliance
  • International Federation of Accountants (opens new window) IFAC
  • Access Accountancy (opens new window) Access Acountancy

Charities

  • ICAS Foundation (opens new window) ICAS Foundation
  • SCABA (opens new window) scaba
© ICAS 2022

The mark and designation “CA” is a registered trade mark of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), and is available for use in the UK and EU only to members of ICAS. If you are not a member of ICAS, you should not use the “CA” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to accountancy, tax or insolvency services. The mark and designation “Chartered Accountant” is a registered trade mark of ICAS, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Chartered Accountants Ireland. If you are not a member of one of these organisations, you should not use the “Chartered Accountant” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to these services. Further restrictions on the use of these marks also apply where you are a member.

ICAS logo

Our cookie policy

ICAS.com uses cookies which are essential for our website to work. We would also like to use analytical cookies to help us improve our website and your user experience. Any data collected is anonymised. Please have a look at the further information in our cookie policy and confirm if you are happy for us to use analytical cookies: