Role of Big Data Analytics-In Finance & Accounts

Article by Rajat Duggal,
PGDM- Finance & International Business, 2008 Batch
Regional Finance Head- Titan

The exploding digitization of activities both in B2B and B2C space has made available a huge amount of data for analysis from multiple sources in various forms. Big data analytics tool enables an account & finance professional to analyse such a huge data to gain in-depth insights for managerial decision making & better controls especially in relation to the revenue leakage.

What is Big Data Analytics(BDA)? BDA is nothing but to handle a huge data base & conduct analysis in a holistic manner, combining the data from different sources like point of sale, stock data, credit card report etc.

Relevance of Big Data Analytics

1. Risk Management – It plays as a tool to ensure the identification & management of probable risk through predictive & other analysis methods. It helps in assessing the controllable & uncontrollable risks involved in executing the various possible strategic options.
2. Better Reporting- Big Data analytics contributes for better financial & integrated reporting, which leads to improvement in quality & accuracy of reporting.
3. Improved Auditing & Controls – BDA plays a pivotal role in detection of revenue leakages & identification of transactional anomalies with the use of detailed reviews of various patterns & trends of big data.
4. Decision Making- BDA helps in better formulation of organisation’s strategy, which involves, providing cost & revenue inputs for developing different financial forecast models under various assumptions, interpretation & analysis of the results.

Big data analytics tools provide a great opportunity to all finance & account professionals to access a huge amount of digital data available from various sources in both structured & unstructured format. In context of our company BDA could be used in various areas like OCG, Internal audit & generation of various relevant analysis for top management especially at regional & divisional level. Lastly to conclude BDA can be used to generate value for various stakeholders in our company.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Institute or its employees.