9/11/2014

Top 10 tech initiatives | CAmagazine.com

Top 10 tech initiatives
Every year the profession is consulted about technology issues. Here’s a roundup of IT priorities and concerns it faces in 2013
By Robert Parker
Illustration: John Ueland
The annual survey of top tech issues facing the profession has engaged readers since 2004. This year CPA Canada joined forces with the American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants in conducting the survey of accounting professionals. In a departure from prior years, this year’s survey focused on entity IT initiatives rather than current and future technology trends. As a result, the survey exposes entity concerns and obtains information on the confidence of respondents to address them effectively.
Of the Canadian survey respondents, 25% work in public accounting, 40% work in business and industry, 15% in government, 10% in consulting and 10% in the not-for-profit sector or other organizations. In addition to ranking technology initiatives, respondents were asked to rank their organization or client organizations on their level of confidence in addressing each issue. Rankings were based on responses of one to five, one being strongly disagree and five strongly agree. (The table below provides the ranking of the initiatives. Next to each ranking is a confidence level expressed as a percentage, that being the percentage of respondents who are confident or highly confident in the ability of their organization or their clients’ organizations to adequately and appropriately address the technology initiatives.)
Managing and retaining data
While there were differences in the US and Canadian surveys, managing and retaining data, in other words “big data,” were ranked first in both surveys. Although this was the
No. 1 initiative, in Canada only 57% of the respondents indicated that they or their clients were confident or highly confident in their ability to appropriately address them.
Big data has allowed businesses to acquire data from nontraditional sources such as social networks, smart or intelligent RFID cards, GPS devices, blogs, video cameras, email and voicemail. Much of this information, while potentially valuable, is unstructured and requires new taxonomies as well as new and better interrogation and analytic software to provide real value to the business.
The benefits of harnessing big data include better and more informed business decisions, faster responses for better client service, greater insight to assist future planning and the opportunity for different and better communications with customers through social media.
However, collecting and using data, particularly personal information, re-quires adherence with laws, regulations, industry standards and contractual obligations.
Entities must address big data issues through new policies and procedures, increased security over confidential and personal information and guidelines over combining and using data from disparate and sometimes unverified sources.
The survey indicated that of the questions in this category, the lowest confidence http://www.camagazine.com/archives/print-edition/2013/sep/features/camagazine75384.aspx 1/8

9/11/2014

Top 10 tech initiatives | CAmagazine.com

was associated with “Has the entity appropriately designed data retention policies and procedures to meet data retention requirements” with a confidence score of only 54%. Clearly, with the increased importance of big data and data analytics additional attention is required.

Securing the IT environment
Fifty-six percent of Canadian respondents indicated they or their clients were confident or highly confident in their ability to effectively address IT security, placing it third on the confidence scale. Particular concern was expressed about the loss, theft or compromising of mobile devices, and increased cyber-attacks that may damage corporate brand and reputation.