The Accounting Profession and IT

As I prepare for my trip to the West Coast I am looking forward to seeing fellow EI, David Terrar and his presentation at Office 2.0 on the community IT Counts he helped develop for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (one of the oldest and most influential accounting bodies in the world). I am then staying over the weekend to participate in the CFO Technology Summit.

And it occurred to me that the accounting profession has in some ways influenced the IT industry (not always positively) more so than even the science and engineering professions.

 - The Big 8 (5,4) accounting firm impact on the systems integration market, particularly in the 1990s

- The reporting relationships of so many CIOs to their CFOs. Especially after the budget overruns in the late 90s related to Y2K, ERP and eBusiness, CFOs took tighter control over IT budgets 

- The recent SOX impact on compliance IT spend and the "crowding out" effect it had on other IT investments

- Revenue recognition rules and how they have impacted software vendor behavior in particular. On the flip side, capitalization rules and how they have impacted buyer staffing and sequencing of projects

- Business process scrutiny accountants brought to IT projects in the 80s and 90s, and more recently, security and business continuity focus through SAS70 reviews

- Feature/function influence they have had in many currency, taxation, costing, budgeting, reporting areas

Love them or hate them (on this blog I have been harsh about SOX and compliance spending waste), accountants have influenced IT quite a bit over the decades.  So it will be good to hear David talk about how they are leveraging technology to help themselves, and it will be good to hear CFOs at the second conference talk about their changing perspectives on IT.