Impacts of big data on accounting

Abstract

Big data and data analytics are currently the buzzwords in both academia and industry to become data driven. Big data has been the trending topic in the accounting industry also. Big data and data analytics will have an important impact on accounting and accountants. Big data will improve the quality of accounting information and the accounting profession will continue to provide real-time and dynamic information to assist in decision-making. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of big data and big data analytics in accounting. Data analytics is one of the most recent developments in the accounting context. This study is qualitative in nature and adopted a literature review methodology to gain a better understanding of the study area. This literature review seeks to provide a description and evaluation of the impact of big data analytics on accounting. This research found that big data presents great opportunities for decision making in accounting and risks analysis, which indicated that companies could improve their performance, measure performance, manage risks and allow effective real-time decision-making with data analytics. This research revealed that accountants can create more value in a world of big data analytics and encourages accountants to get started with big data to find answers to risks in business operations as well as understand financial performance. It shows that relying on big data analytics will open new possibilities for accountants. This study contributes to the research literature in the area of big data analytics on accounting. The limitations of this study are that it utilizes few recent peer reviewed articles in the general accounting practice, therefore not exhaustive in describing how big data and big data analytics impacts accounting.