Can Big Data Analytics Be Used By Management Accountants?

“Big data is a popular term used to describe the exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured. And big data may be as important to business – and society – as the Internet has become. Why? More data may lead to more accurate analyses.” (SAS, 1)

Data collected by a business includes internal data, such as financial or operational information, as well as external data, such as customer or website usage information. Properly analyzing and acting on this vast amount of data can transform the way companies do business and can become their biggest competitive advantage. Leaders of the organization no longer have to rely on their “gut instincts” to make key decisions, instead they will make decisions off historic data and will be able to more easily measure and track the effectiveness of those decisions.

In the changeable world with dynamic economic situation and fluid market information, corporate decision-making is becoming increasingly difficult for many enterprises. Under these circumstances, executives and managers are expected to be equipped with accurate, related and real-time information and live up to expectations of strong profits and growth (Royaee, Salehi and Aseman, 2012). Accounting and financial information, which is becoming easier to collect and access, is widely employed by decision makers as the main resource of information in the process of managerial decision making. In other words，the primary purpose of an accounting

Access to vast amounts of data is creating paradigm shifts in business. What is the impact on accounting? Manual tasks are being automated at a fast pace. Technological advancements, along with the transformation of buying habits to more web-based purchasing is creating opportunities to observe elements of human behavior not previously tracked. Enhanced data tracking creates a sea of data elements available for harvesting. Companies are forming strategies using correlation analysis of behavioral patterns extracted from web activities. Executives are analyzing data elements relevant to their business to improve the efficacy of strategic decisions. As part of the development of stronger data analytics, executives see the choice of an Accounting Information System (AIS) as a critical component to execution. Data analytics, if accurate and relevant to the business, can be an effective tool to enhance performance in most business aspects, including accounting, operations, internal audit, external audit, and forensic accounting. The future opportunities in accounting are in forward-looking, analytical roles.

According to Investopedia, Big Data is, “The growth in volume of structured and unstructured data, the speed at which it is created and collected, and the scope of how many points are covered. Big

Moreover companies that implement Big-data analytics application gain tangible benefits in their finance department, sales department, and human resources department.

Like the traditional data, big data through a series of steps that contain collection, storage and analysis to form a complete system to help both enterprises and individuals produce an optimum strategy or decision and maximize benefits in their stance. As for traditional data system, it is usually not enough accurate in analyze the phenomenon or the situation due to lack of sufficient data that results from the speed of collecting data is relatively low and the process

Big data is defined as “large data sets or to systems and solutions developed to manage such large accumulations of data, as well as for the branch of computing devoted to this development.” (“Big Data”) This definition of big data was not added to the dictionary until 2014. The next big thing in business analytics is a relatively new, yet, explosive business practice known as data mining: the collection and analysis of big data. (Fayyad) These large, seemingly random, sets of data are condensed and analyzed for patterns and trends by people with a very broad set of skills. These people are known as data scientists and are considered unicorns in today’s job market.

The speed at which data arrives, gets stored and the demand to analyse this data on a more regular basis in real time addresses the velocity aspect of big data. The fact that enterprises these days are dealing with petabytes of data instead of terabytes means a new way of thinking needs to be adopted which will involve the thinking of the data problem from the inception point of the data (Zikopoulos et al. 2012) (in the case of SMEs this will mean knowing what to do with the data before it arrives). For businesses, getting an edge over the competition could mean the businesses ability to identify a trend, a problem, or an opportunity only seconds and in some cases microseconds, before someone else. Velocity also means that because of the speed at which data arrives the

Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis or in other words big data is a collection of data sets which is very large in size as well as complex.

Data platforms required to have several attributes to start handling Big Data. They need to be able to hold the large volumes of data that was now being generated, handle the speed at which data was being collected, and be able to handle various formats and structures of data. While data

The importance of analytics in big and small companies could not be overestimated. Every organization uses big data in order to manage their processes and improve its business. The term of "analytics" is commonly defined as "the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models and fact-based management to drive predictive models" (Davenport & Harris, 2007). Analytics appears to be a useful tool, which helps to gain necessary information and provide extensive support to all departments in the enterprise. Nowadays analytical innovations play a big role on the market as they help an organization to gain a competitive advantage and become a market leader. According to the researcher Svetlana Sicular, analytics helps the companies to organize big data and divide all the information into relevant and irrelevant. In such a way organization receive an opportunity to process this data and deliver necessary information to a customer faster and more efficient. Furthermore, new tools and applications help to build up a reliable channel of communication between clients and a support team (Wagner, 2016). That is why almost all the companies are constantly trying to improve their analytical methods in order to attract more customers and investors to their business. The examples of such organization as Netflix Inc., Harrah 's Entertainment and Amazon show that analytics could help an enterprise to develop in its field and gain a strong

This article discusses firms that are at the leading edge of developing a big data analytics capability. Business firms and other types of organizations are feverishly exploring ways of taking advantage of the big data phenomenon. Big data is increasingly the cornerstone on which policy making is based. Firms that are currently enjoying the most success in this area are able to use big data not only to improve their existing businesses but to create new businesses as well. Putting a strategic emphasis on big data requires adding an analytics capability to the existing organization. This transformation process results in power shifting to analytics experts and in decisions being made in real time.

This article discusses firms that are at the leading edge of developing a big data analytic capability. Business firms and other types of organizations are feverishly exploring ways of taking advantage of the big data phenomenon. Big data is increasingly the cornerstone on which policy making is based. Firms that are currently enjoying the most success in this area are able to use big data not only to improve their existing businesses but to create new businesses as well. This transformation process results in power shifting to analytic experts and in decisions being made in real time. This set of symposium articles, authors examines the promise and problems of big data from a variety of perspectives.

In today’s world, the amount of unstructured data collected is humungous. This unstructured data is of no use if it is not properly processed, analyzed and evaluated. Using this data for the betterment of mankind is what most of the largest companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and much more are targeting. Big data is a term for datasets which are so large and complex that traditional database systems such as MS SQL, MySQL, etc., are incapable of handling them. It is not the amount of data that is important, but what organizations do with data that matters the most. Data can be mapped to useful information which can be further utilized for analyzing and drawing insights that lead to better management practices and strategic