The AICPA's Tech Committee (and the IT Section) has some answers.
Every year they “crowdsource” all of the major technology issues facing the CPA profession, and they recently released their 2011 Top Technology Initiatives Survey. What I really liked about this year's list is the segmenting by business and industry and public practice.
Here is the overall list for 2011:
- Control and use of mobile devices
- Information security
- Data retention policies and structure
- Remote access
- Staff and management training
- Process documentation and improvements
- Saving and making money with technology
- Technology cost controls
- Budget processes
- Project management and deployment of new technology
The report goes on to say, “While mobile devices topped overall survey rankings for the CPA profession, CPAs in public practice worry about data retention while CPAs in business and industry consider information security as a key concern. The ranking of the technologies varied greatly for CPAs in both groups, and the overall list above is based on combined rankings.”
For CPAs in business and industry, the top five technology initiatives were:
- Information security
- Control and use of mobile devices
- Data retention policies and structure
- Budget processes
- Remote access
For CPAs in public practice, the top five technology initiatives were:
- Data retention policies and structure
- Remote access
- Control and use of mobile devices
- Information security
- Staff and management training
No surprise about mobile, but I was surprised to see cloud computing way down the list (22nd), and no mention of XBRL (which I happen to think is one of the most important IT areas for CPAs; see my post Transparency, accountability, efficiency: Time for a revolution).
See the article by the Journal of Accountancy, Mobile Devices Top CPAs Tech Survey Rankings
What is your take on this? Any surprises? Anything missing?
We have some great tech programs you can find here and in our BLI catalog to bring to your firm or company to help you deal with No. 5 in the list. In fact, we are training our entire team on Windows 7.