How are digitalization of finance tasks and a firm’s digitalization strategy related? Does it matter what the finance department’s main objective is? And what happens when firms combine the use of automation and analytics? These and other questions are addressed in a paper that’s now published in Management Accounting Research.

What I particularly like about this paper is that it combines (quantitative) survey responses and insights from (qualitative) interviews with various finance directors to address the questions above.

Summarizingly, we find that having a digitalization strategy as a firm matters, that there are differences between the adoption of automation and analytics depending on the finance department’s objectives, and, surprisingly, that using both automation and analytics may result in… lower (!) effectiveness of the finance function.

Thanks to the brilliant international group of co-authors for the informative discussions, the survey respondents and interviewees for their time and input, and the reviewers, editor, and others colleagues worldwide who provided us with constructive feedback!

I hope the paper is useful for practitioners who contemplate the use of different technologies, and I’m sure it can be helpful in classroom settings to discuss the complexities surrounding the implementation of new accounting & finance technologies.

Link full paper (open access): https://lnkd.in/eWm9ia4m