1. Do you think technological developments will always be an issue for management accountants?
2. Based on the brief summary above, what kinds of skills other than technical accounting training do management accountants need?

In the March 2012 edition of CIMA’s Financial Management journal, Christian Doherty asks what will management accountants ten years on be grappling with? This question has been posed before (see, for example, Scapens et al., 2003) and technology is a factor which is often cited as being something which will change management accounting. Doherty (2012) mentions a number of trends which are likely to affect how business is done and, thus, how management accountants do their work.
Technology is viewed by Doherty as a potential ‘liberator’, allowing management accountants to become more influential in decision-making. Technology developments such as Big Data have become a key tool in the provision of decision-making information (see CGMA, 2014). However, management accountants need to be cautious that increasing amounts of data do not overwhelm them. A second factor mentioned by Doherty (2012) is the need to provide insight, not information. Put simply, reporting may not be enough; rather, man-agement accountants of the future must be able to provide professional insightful advice to other managers and directors. Third, while the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) economies receive a lot of attention as some of the fastest growing, these are likely to be joined by others such as Columbia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Turkey.
These new markets may present new opportunities for many firms, either in increasing sales or a manufacturing base, for example. Again, management accountants need to be centre stage to help take advantage of any opportunities. Finally, reporting is likely to become increasingly broad, with issues like sustainability, risk assessment and business valuation coming to the fore. More recently, in 2016 the IMA CEO reinforced the analytical skills needed of management accountants to provide ‘predictive analytics (forecasting future events) and prescriptive analytics (actions and interventions, based on historical and future trends)’.