Instructions:

Respond to the post below with any inputs or suggestions.

· All posts (both initial and responses) must be substantial (several paragraphs each) and each of your initial posts must be supported by 3 peer reviewed or authoritative sources, not including the textbook, cited properly in APA format. Responses should have proper support with at least 1 different source as applicable.

The leading accounting firms in the world are Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY), and Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG).

Known as the ‘Big 4’, these firms completely dominate the industry, auditing more than 80 percent of all US public companies. In addition, these mammoth organizations advise on tax and offer a wide range of management and assurance services. (big4accountingfirms)

For this discussion, I chose the two best ranked, Deloitte, and PwC.

Deloitte LLP is the number one firm in the United States (and in the world). Typically, Deloitte specializes in audit & assurance, tax, advisory, and risk. Additionally, they offer a wide range of tax services that include strategy, financial and technical, and human capital. Deloitte is located in more than 150 countries and has over 600 offices in the world. The firm is headquartered in New York City, New York. (big4accountingfirms, n.d.)

PwC(PricewaterhouseCoopers) is ranked as the number two accounting firm in the world. PwC offers a large selection of services to their clients including: Audit & Assurance, consulting, IFRS reporting, tax services, and others. PwC has locations in more than 150 countries and more than 750 offices worldwide. Unlike Deloitte, they are headquartered in London. (big4accountingfirms, n.d.)

Big data and the use of data analytics are being adopted more frequently, especially in companies that are looking for new methods to develop smarter capabilities and tackle challenges in dynamic processes. (Sedkaoui, 2018).

Organizations are starting to realize that big data is more about business transformation than IT transformation. Big data is allowing companies to answer questions they could not previously answer and make more timely decisions at a finer level of fidelity than before, yielding new insights that can deliver business differentiation and new operational efficiencies. (Schmarzo, 2013).

According to Deloitte, its Analytics & AI offerings are designed to help organizations transform decision-making, work, and interactions through the use of insights, automation, and engagement capabilities. Its analytics practice is built around the wide range of needs its clients bring to them. Data scientists, data architects, business and domain specialists who bring a wealth of business-specific knowledge, visualization and design specialists, and of course technology and application engineers. They have a ventures fund to help them stay at the forefront of the latest developments and actively shape what’s next in analytics. They have more than 2,000 data scientists around the world. They have developed a global network of more than 80 delivery centers including the Deloitte Greenhouse spaces and studios, to support client needs, and they plug into a mature ecosystem of more than 300 relationships spanning science, technology, services, academia, and data providers. (Deloitte, n.d.)

Data Analytics spans all of the Deloitte functional businesses to address a continuum of opportunities in Information Management, Performance Optimisation, and Analytic Insights. By understanding decision-makers’ roles to maximize analytics value, Deloitte turns everyday information into useful and actionable insights. Our solutions include: Advanced Analytics, Enterprise Data Management, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Analytics. (Deloitte, n.d.)

An example of AI technology implemented by Deloitte is the tool CognitiveTax Insight™ (CogTax).

CognitiveTax Insight™ (CogTax) provides an increased, improved, and more efficient analysis of clients’ indirect tax data set. CogTax has the ability to analyze the full population, if desired, of a clients’ accounts payable transactions compared to a traditional, sampled approach. The solution not only allows tax professionals to save time and resources but can help companies to proactively avoid overpaying their indirect tax liabilities. CogTax leverages optical character recognition (OCR), along with advanced machine learning algorithms and analytics, to effectively analyze a full population of data and documents to assist clients with indirect tax overpayment recovery and reduce the potential for future over or underpayments. (Deloitte, 2019)

Also, Deloitte developed an automated document review platform that holds benefits for all of Deloitte’s businesses and the clients they serve. The software tool allows teams to process all types of documents and unstructured information faster and with greater accuracy. Along with the capability to read and assess larger samples, the automated document review platform also includes real-time analytics. For instance, the software tool can find and separate documents that contain price escalation clauses from those that don’t, highlighting potential risks and differences in how to account for a particular transaction as an example. (Deloitte, n.d.)

For its part. According to PwC, its Analytics and AI Transformation Solution spans the spectrum of strategy to design, development, and deployment of analytics, and AI capabilities, helping organizations lay the groundwork for a realistic, AI-powered future.

PwC recognizes that Analytics and AI is not just math and data, it’s an organizational, technical, and behavior shift to focus on outcomes that drive strategic results. They accelerate the strategy journey through digital accelerators, such as better understand current data, analytics, & AI investments and value through its Analytics Maturity Model survey, co-developed with Carnegie Mellon University, for rapid assessments and benchmarking; and improve speed to market and additional demand generation through the use of its analytics use case library. (PwC, n.d.)

PwC provides a range of analytics and AI digital assets to support its clients such as: Insights Platform, that is a cloud-based web app, accessed through SSO, that combines scalable big data technologies with its proprietary data models, analytics services, and pre-packaged visualizations to create easy-to-deploy, enterprise-ready solution; AI Lab, that puts research to the test through hands-on experimentation, rapid prototyping and proofs of concept that demonstrate the business potential of emerging technologies; and, Customer Link, that Helps clients make data-driven decisions around acquisition, growth, and retention by combining a comprehensive view of customer data with a proprietary PwC customer data model and purpose-built analytics engine. (PwC, n.d.)

PwC has made a significant investment in pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) for the audit. They partnered with a leading Silicon Valley company to build a revolutionary bot that uses AI and machine learning to ‘x-ray’ a business, analyzing billions of data points in milliseconds, seeing what humans can’t, and applying judgment to detect anomalies in the general ledger. Called GL.ai, it is the first module of PwC’s Audit.ai. GL.ai harnesses PwC’s global knowledge and experience, embedding it in algorithms trained to replicate the thinking and decision-making of expert auditors. It examines every uploaded transaction, every user, every amount, and every account to find unusual transactions (indicating potential error or fraud) in the general ledger, without bias or variability. (PwC, n.d.)

Big data is driving the business world. In this environment, accountants must align themselves with the market demands and incorporate data analytics into their work routines, to help businesses discover valuable insights within their financials, better manage risks, and identify improvements in processes that promote increase business efficiency.

For the finance and accounting profession, big data is giving rise to new forms of business value and enterprise risk that will have an impact on our rules, standards, and practices. The accounting and audit professionals are in the center of the data explosion and are poised to become ever more vital to stakeholders in enabling data and insight-driven enterprises. More and more companies are using data analytics to excel in the marketplace. (PwC, n.d.)

The amount of data available to organizations every day continues to proliferate at a staggering volume. But technologies such as analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to help businesses make better use of these massive volumes of data. In an age of collaboration between humans and machines—what we call the “Age of With”—organizations can gain advantage by designing systems in which humans and machines work together to improve the speed and quality of decision-making. (Davenport, et al., 2019)

References

Analytics and AI Transformation. Unlock the full potential of analytics and artificial intelligence to revolutionize your business. (n.d). https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/fit-for-growth/analytics-ai-transformation.html

Automated document review. Innovation with natural language processing. (n.d.) https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/business-innovation-automated-document-review.html

Data Analytics. Hindsight. Insight. Foresight. (n.d.) https://www2.deloitte.com/na/en/pages/risk/solutions/data-analytics.html

Data analytics. (n.d.) https://www2.deloitte.com/ru/en/pages/strategy/solutions/data-analytics.html

Davenport, T., Guszcza, J., Smith, T., & Stiller, B. (2019, July 25). Analytics and AI-driven enterprises thrive in the Age of With. The culture catalyst. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ec/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/DI_Becoming-an-Insight-Driven-organization%20(2).pdf

Deloitte AI and Analytics. (n.d.) https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/deloitte-analytics/solutions/deloitte-analytics.html

Deloitte Uses AI to Transform Indirect Tax Recovery. (2019. August 8). https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/press-releases/deloitte-uses-ai-to-transform-indirect-tax-recovery.html

Harnessing the power of AI to transform the detection of fraud and error. (n.d.) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/about/stories-from-across-the-world/harnessing-the-power-of-ai-to-transform-the-detection-of-fraud-and-error.html

Introduction to Data & Analytics for Finance and Accounting Professionals. (n.d.). https://www.pwc.com/sg/en/people-and-change/assets/data-analytics-fp.pdf

Schmarzo, B., (2013). Big data: Understanding how data powers big business. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Sedkaoui, S. (2018). Data analytics and big data. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

The Big 4 Accounting Firms. (n.d.). https://big4accountingfirms.org/