BCAS Vice President CA Chirag Doshi’s Message for the Month of July 2022

On commencing my journey as Vice President, I am privileged and delighted to share my first communique with you.

As a tradition in our Society, on July 6th every year, the change of guards happens at the Society, and it gives me a sense of pride to take charge as Vice President of this prestigious Society as it enters its 74th year. In my journey of more than a decade as a BCAite, I got an opportunity to work and learn, while my interactions with many past presidents helped me be a better professional. I got an opportunity to work under the able leadership of Abhay Mehta, which was an eventful year of Hybrid events.

In my journey at BCAS, I had the opportunity to attend, organize and be a speaker at many events of the Society like RRCs, technical workshops, study circles, power summit, soft skill program, Jhancar and Tarang (CA and Student talent/networking events), contribute to Journal and Referencer of the Society. This participations helped me to reach where I am today in my professional life.

The Society moves forward with our New president Mihir Sheth, a transition from ESG (Empowering – Scaling and Globalizing), which was the theme of Immediate Past President Abhay Mehta, to EASE (Excellence Achieved by Systematic Empowerment) related to Ease of Access to knowledge, Ease of Embracing emerging opportunities, Ease of Networking and reach and Ease of Reskilling.

The era of Changing Professional Landscape

In this ERA of changing professional landscape, it’s time to achieve excellence through systematic Empowerment. The impact of changing professional landscape due to disruption by technology could mean things like growth in the GiG economy, cloud-based accounting technologies, automation of audit tax fillings, audit automations, new ideas and small start-ups. Changing Professional needs have resulted into disruption in the working models like work from home concept, virtual offices, shared offices, opportunities for self-employment. New practice avenues like Virtual CFO, Valuations, Family office management and overall Financial Engineering through technology could shape the future of our profession.

Our profession will face new challenges as well as will have multiple opportunities in the coming decade, especially from ever-evolving technologies, globalization of compliances and new regulations.

From the traditional approach, the firms have to move to automated technologies like cloud computing, blockchain technology, machine learning, automated accounting applications. Firm will have to imbibe the technology-based changes like online assessments, online corporate meetings, including board and audit committee meetings, digital signatures, online working projects and team meetings, GST and income tax trackers, auto email reminders, online confirmations and many more.

As said, technology may not replace humans entirely, but a technology-driven firm may replace the traditional firms if they don’t embrace the changes.

Globalization of Compliances would lead to new disclosures in the financial statements, migration to global reporting standards requirements, and compliances with various jurisdictions’ tax and corporate laws. A lot of countries like the USA, Australia, the UK and more are outsourcing their accounting work to India, resulting in a huge opportunity for Indian firms as well as the GiG economy in India.

New Regulations in the field of Assurance, GST, Domestic tax, International tax and transfer pricing, base erosion and profit shifting, etc., would require the corporates to adjust and adapt to the changes and would need support from the professionals to ensure a smooth implementation of the changes in a timely manner.

All of the above would mean continuous knowledge and skill upgradation through continuous training and networking.

One question always comes: will robots replace accountants?

The clear answer is NO. In fact, technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analysis, and virtual and augmented reality will empower us by increasing the speed, accuracy and completeness of the data. The human factor can never be replaced by technology. When Tesla built a fully automated plant in California, it could have been a revolution in manufacturing. However, the AI-powered robots slowed down production, and the plant failed to meet its set targets. The company had to shut down the factory then and hire human skills to train and manage those robots.

Elon Musk tweeted, “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”

Hence many would say that technology would replace accountants, but the truth is it would empower the accountant to take the right decision at the right time and guide the management as their ever-trusted advisor.

Hybrid Facility at Jolly Bhavan

As we all have witnessed as our guest speaker on the 73rd Founding day lecture meeting held on July 6th 2022, mentioned that what we would have achieved as technology upgradation over a decade, we have been able to accomplish in the last two years due to pandemic situation. From physical events to online and now hybrid events. We at BCAS have also upgraded to a new hybrid facility set up at our Jolly Bhavan office, and this facility now enables us to have hybrid programs with Ease.