Big Data Analytics: Opportunity or Threat for the Accounting Profession?

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Richins ◽  
Andrea Stapleton ◽  
Theophanis C. Stratopoulos ◽  
Christopher Wong

ABSTRACT Contrary to Frey and Osborne's (2013) prediction that the accounting profession faces extinction, we argue that accountants can still create value in a world of Big Data analytics. To advance this position, we provide a conceptual framework based on structured/unstructured data and problem-driven/exploratory analysis. We argue that accountants already excel at problem-driven analysis of structured data, are well positioned to play a leading role in the problem-driven analysis of unstructured data, and can support data scientists performing exploratory analysis on Big Data. Our argument rests on two pillars: accountants are familiar with structured datasets, easing the transition to working with unstructured data, and possess knowledge of business fundamentals. Thus, rather than replacing accountants, we argue that Big Data analytics complements accountants' skills and knowledge. However, educators, standard setters, and professional bodies must adjust their curricula, standards, and frameworks to accommodate the challenges of Big Data analytics.

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashwin Belle ◽  
Raghuram Thiagarajan ◽  
S. M. Reza Soroushmehr ◽  
Fatemeh Navidi ◽  
Daniel A. Beard ◽  
...  

The rapidly expanding field of big data analytics has started to play a pivotal role in the evolution of healthcare practices and research. It has provided tools to accumulate, manage, analyze, and assimilate large volumes of disparate, structured, and unstructured data produced by current healthcare systems. Big data analytics has been recently applied towards aiding the process of care delivery and disease exploration. However, the adoption rate and research development in this space is still hindered by some fundamental problems inherent within the big data paradigm. In this paper, we discuss some of these major challenges with a focus on three upcoming and promising areas of medical research: image, signal, and genomics based analytics. Recent research which targets utilization of large volumes of medical data while combining multimodal data from disparate sources is discussed. Potential areas of research within this field which have the ability to provide meaningful impact on healthcare delivery are also examined.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwa Rabe Mohamed Elkmash ◽  
Magdy Gamal Abdel-Kader ◽  
Bassant Badr El Din

Purpose This study aims to investigate and explore the impact of big data analytics (BDA) as a mechanism that could develop the ability to measure customers’ performance. To accomplish the research aim, the theoretical discussion was developed through the combination of the diffusion of innovation theory with the technology acceptance model (TAM) that is less developed for the research field of this study. Design/methodology/approach Empirical data was obtained using Web-based quasi-experiments with 104 Egyptian accounting professionals. Further, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and the chi-square goodness-of-fit test were used to analyze data. Findings The empirical results indicate that measuring customers’ performance based on BDA increase the organizations’ ability to analyze the customers’ unstructured data, decrease the cost of customers’ unstructured data analysis, increase the ability to handle the customers’ problems quickly, minimize the time spent to analyze the customers’ data and obtaining the customers’ performance reports and control managers’ bias when they measure customer satisfaction. The study findings supported the accounting professionals’ acceptance of BDA through the TAM elements: the intention to use (R), perceived usefulness (U) and the perceived ease of use (E). Research limitations/implications This study has several limitations that could be addressed in future research. First, this study focuses on customers’ performance measurement (CPM) only and ignores other performance measurements such as employees’ performance measurement and financial performance measurement. Future research can examine these areas. Second, this study conducts a Web-based experiment with Master of Business Administration students as a study’s participants, researchers could conduct a laboratory experiment and report if there are differences. Third, owing to the novelty of the topic, there was a lack of theoretical evidence in developing the study’s hypotheses. Practical implications This study succeeds to provide the much-needed empirical evidence for BDA positive impact in improving CPM efficiency through the proposed framework (i.e. CPM and BDA framework). Furthermore, this study contributes to the improvement of the performance measurement process, thus, the decision-making process with meaningful and proper insights through the capability of collecting and analyzing the customers’ unstructured data. On a practical level, the company could eventually use this study’s results and the new insights to make better decisions and develop its policies. Originality/value This study holds significance as it provides the much-needed empirical evidence for BDA positive impact in improving CPM efficiency. The study findings will contribute to the enhancement of the performance measurement process through the ability of gathering and analyzing the customers’ unstructured data.


2021 ◽  
pp. 67-74
Author(s):  
Liudmyla Zubyk ◽  
Yaroslav Zubyk

Big data is one of modern tools that have impacted the world industry a lot of. It also plays an important role in determining the ways in which businesses and organizations formulate their strategies and policies. However, very limited academic researches has been conducted into forecasting based on big data due to the difficulties in capturing, collecting, handling, and modeling of unstructured data, which is normally characterized by it’s confidential. We define big data in the context of ecosystem for future forecasting in business decision-making. It can be difficult for a single organization to possess all of the necessary capabilities to derive strategic business value from their findings. That’s why different organizations will build, and operate their own analytics ecosystems or tap into existing ones. An analytics ecosystem comprising a symbiosis of data, applications, platforms, talent, partnerships, and third-party service providers lets organizations be more agile and adapt to changing demands. Organizations participating in analytics ecosystems can examine, learn from, and influence not only their own business processes, but those of their partners. Architectures of popular platforms for forecasting based on big data are presented in this issue.


IEEE Access ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1944-1952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qinghua Lu ◽  
Zheng Li ◽  
Maria Kihl ◽  
Liming Zhu ◽  
Weishan Zhang

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (S3) ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
S. Mamatha ◽  
T. Sudha

In this digital world, as organizations are evolving rapidly with data centric asset the explosion of data and size of the databases have been growing exponentially. Data is generated from different sources like business processes, transactions, social networking sites, web servers, etc. and remains in structured as well as unstructured form. The term ― Big data is used for large data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data varies in size ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set. Difficulties include capture, storage, search, sharing, analytics and visualizing. Big data is available in structured, unstructured and semi-structured data format. Relational database fails to store this multi-structured data. Apache Hadoop is efficient, robust, reliable and scalable framework to store, process, transforms and extracts big data. Hadoop framework is open source and fee software which is available at Apache Software Foundation. In this paper we will present Hadoop, HDFS, Map Reduce and c-means big data algorithm to minimize efforts of big data analysis using Map Reduce code. The objective of this paper is to summarize the state-of-the-art efforts in clinical big data analytics and highlight what might be needed to enhance the outcomes of clinical big data analytics tools and related fields.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 570
Author(s):  
Cungki Kusdarjito

The advancement of big data analytics is paving the way for knowledge creation based on very huge and unstructured data. Currently, information is scattered and growth tremendously, containing many information but difficult to be interpreted. Consequently, traditional approaches are no longer suitable for unstructured data but very rich in information. This situation is different from the role of previous information technology in which information is based on structured data, stored in the local storage, and in more advanced form, information can be retrieved through internet. Meanwhile, in Indonesia data are collected by many institutions with different measurement standard. The nature of the data collection is top-down, carried out by survey which is expensive yet unreliable and stored exclusively by respective institution. SIDeKa (Sistem Informasi Desa dan Kawasan/Village and Regional Information System), which are connected nationally, is proposed as a system of data collection in the village level and prepared by local people. Using SIDeKa, data reliability and readiness can be improved at the local level. The goals of the SIDeKa is not only local people have information in their hand such as poverty level, production, commodity price, the area of cultivated land, and the outbreak of diseases in their village, but also they have information from the neighboring villages or event at the national level. For government, data reliability will improve the policy effectiveness. This paper discusses the implementation and role of SIDeKa for knowledge creation in the village level, especially for the agricultural activities which has been initiated in 2015.Keywords: big data analytics; SIDeKa;  unstructured data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 1091-1109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riccardo Rialti ◽  
Giacomo Marzi ◽  
Mario Silic ◽  
Cristiano Ciappei

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of big data analytics-capable business process management systems (BDA-capable BPMS) on ambidextrous organizations’ agility. In particular, how the functionalities of BDA-capable BPMS may improve organizational dynamism and reactiveness to challenges of Big Data era will be explored. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical analysis of the potential of BDA-capable BPMS in increasing organizational agility, with particular attention to the ambidextrous organizations, has been performed. A conceptual framework was subsequently developed. Next, the proposed conceptual framework was applied in a real-world context. Findings The research proposes a framework highlighting the importance of BDA-capable BPMS in increasing ambidextrous organizations’ agility. Moreover, the authors apply the framework to the cases of consumer-goods companies that have included BDA in their processes management. Research limitations/implications The principal limitations are linked to the need to validate quantitatively the proposed framework. Practical implications The value of the proposed framework is related to its potential in helping managers to fully understand and exploit the potentiality of BDA-capable BPMS. Moreover, the implications show some guidelines to ease the implementation of such systems within ambidextrous organizations. Originality/value The research offers a model to interpret the effects of BDA-capable BPMS on ambidextrous organizations’ agility. In this way, the research addresses a significant gap by exploring the importance of information systems for ambidextrous organizations’ agility.


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