WORLD ACADEMY OF INFORMATICS AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
ISSN : 2278-1315
combining data from different systems; swivel chair
Tay learned from the Twitter community, and used newly
processing is heading toward extinction.
acquired language skills, it became what The Telegraph
described as, ‘a fascist, misogynistic, racist, pornographic
VISUALIZATION
entity’. A fascinating lesson about the power of AI
This is about using technology to turn increasing amounts of
technology.
raw data into accessible insight for an organization. Turning
AI (Artificial Intelligence) has already entered the mainstream
traditional spreadsheet metrics into pictures and
as a speech recognition technology. In a post-PC world, where
infographics make important organizational stories easier to
most people are connected to the Internet via handheld
understand for the laymen who sit outside of the finance
devices, the usefulness of speech recognition will continue to
function. These tools can also help speed up processes when
evolve. Within a few years this could see the death of
using data and exploring for prototyping and scenario
keyboards, as the finance professional talks to, questions and
planning.
teaches their AI applications directly.
FINANCE EXPONENTIALS TOOLS:
ADVANCED ANALYTICS
Nichols has argued that technological advances and
increasing amounts of data and information have not
produced a new age of enlightenment. In fact, he articulates
that the limitless supply of information is making us more
dumb. Here’s where advanced analytical tools can help – by
automating the examination of data to discover patterns,
which the financial professional can turn into insight. Thiel
highlights this collaborative working.
Computers can find patterns that elude humans, but they
don’t know how to compare patterns from different sources
or how to interpret complex behaviors. Actionable insights
can only come from a human analyst (or the kind of
generalized artificial intelligence that exists only in science
fiction).
In tandem with the finance professional, these advanced
analytic tools can greatly improve the effectiveness of
planning and forecasting, leading to deeper business insight
and better predictive modeling. As the finance function
further embraces these tools and the algorithms that
underpin them, it will blur the boundaries between the world
of the data scientist and the management accountant.
The problem of big data volumes is also a recurring
challenge in our interviews. With too much data,
organizations are struggling to gain real insight and spot
new business opportunities. One interviewee confessed:
“We have really powerful tools, lots of data, but we don’t
use either well”.
COGNITIVE COMPUTING
This is an umbrella term that encompasses areas such as
artificial intelligence, speech recognition and machine
learning. The elements work together to provide automated
insights into the increasing amounts of data we have access
to. It is thanks to natural language processing innovations
that we’re able to generate real-time management reports in
a personalized language that our organizations are used to.
Today we chuckle when we ask Amazon’s Echo, Apple’s
Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana to tell us a joke or recite some
poetry and wait for their clunky response. In March 2016,
Microsoft launched a chat-bot called Tay. The chat-bot was
designed, using machine learning, to evolve and interact
with humans through the medium of Twitter. Within 24
hours of launch, Tay’s Twitter account was suspended by
Microsoft. Why? Because a group of Twitter users began
tweeting Tay with politically incorrect phrases. As
www.waims.co.in
IN-MEMORY COMPUTING.
This is the move away from working with data stored in
complicated relational databases, to technical architecture
storage solutions, where information sits in dedicated Random
Access Memory (RAM) servers. Data transfer rates within
RAM is thousands of times faster than on disc.
It leads to the ability to handle and interrogate massive live
data sets quickly and more efficiently. The future is the real-
time detection of patterns and instant analysis of data that will
enable faster decisions. As the price of memory decreases, the
adoption of in-memory computing will increase across
organizations.
BLOCKCHAIN
Simplified, a blockchain is a digital platform that stores
records of value transactions through a distributed, peer-
topeer network. The records on a blockchain are immutable,
which means the ledger is verifiable and auditable. The
bitcoin currency is the most cited example of a blockchain in
action, but the future could bring smart, programmable
contracts, revolutionize how music is shared and eliminate the
need for third parties in peer-to-peer transfers of value.
In the last year, blockchain has scaled the Gartner Hype Cycle
‘peak of inflated expectation’, and is on the cusp of entering
the ‘trough of disillusionment’. Gartner predicts that
blockchain technologies will achieve mainstream adoption
within five to 10 years. EVRY, a Norwegian information
technology company, is heralding the technology as the fifth
disruptive computing paradigm.
Finally, the Harvard Business Review talks of blockchain
being a foundational technology: ‘it has the potential to create
new foundations for our economic and social systems’. The
buzz around blockchain technologies is reflected in our
interviews. Interviewees have shared examples of how banks,
regulators and governments are experimenting with tools,
based upon blockchains, to change fundamentally banking
and the corporate tax landscape. These visionaries are
working towards a future where organizations are recording to
their balance sheets in real time through transparent
blockchains.
Regulators and governmental tax administrations will then
have open access to organizational financial transactions, and
be able to calculate and deduct tax automatically in real time.
The prospect of regulators and shareholders gaining direct
access into organizations’ future financial blockchain ledgers
also has major implications for corporate reporting.
Direct access in real time to an organization’s databases by
regulators and stakeholders could make the activity of
compiling corporate reporting redundant. A key takeaway
from our interview research is that this is a crucial technology
ENDEAVOR 2019 | WAIMS ACADMIC PRESS
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