Great IMA Conference in L.A.!
IMA Technology Solutions and Practices Committee members who attended the annual conference in Los Angeles with me will agree - we had very good interactions in the almost 20 tech-related sessions, judging from my experiences. The breakout sessions featured lively discussions and contributions from attendees to enhance the input from experts in the fields. Some of those I was fortunate to attend:
1. COSO and Integrated Reporting with Brad Monterio and Liv Watson - A fantastic idea of applying the recently updated COSO framework to the Integrated Reporting requirements to help improve the consistency and practice of the <IR> function. The discussion was lively and apparently valuable to Liv and Brad as a proof-of-concept.
2. Tech Trends with Eric Matyac - Another lively interaction between participants on the topic of what Accounting and Finance pros see as the priorities in new tech enablement. We were surprised to see that the IMA Tech Solutions survey implied that AP, GL, and AR streamlining were high priorities, compared to Business Intelligence or analytics. A lot of advice was exchanged on how to succeed at IT application implementation. The survey is ongoing, so please participate at IMA Conference Survey for Top Technology Trends in Accounting & Finance Presentation
3. Big Data and PowerPivot in Excel - Chris Mishler - a Management Accounting Roundtable session by Yours Truly. The attendees were a mixture of different backgrounds and skill levels in the use of databases, for example, but all seemed to grow in familiarity with the "Most Important Improvement in Excel in the Last 20 Years!" (Bill Jelen, paraphrased).
4. PowerPivot with Mr. Excel - Bill showed us some of the "Power" in PowerPivot and the rest of the Power suite in Excel 2010/2013 which can revolutionize the business of insights from large data sets from multiple sources. Of special note is the DAX formula language that is not super hard to learn, but creates "portable" formulas that can be applied across multiple tables in relationships. PowerMap was pretty cool too!
5. Data Analytics (with Mayo Clinic) - Erich Heneke, of Mayo's Supply Chain Management illustrated live data visualizations in Tableau software that provided very focused transparency (if that is a possible condition) on risks in the data of this $4 Billion enterprise. Quite enlightening.
6. Is Data Science the New Statistics? Tom Miller, PhD, took us through an analysis of the Data Science field and compared and contrasted it with the field of Statistics. In some ways, yes, Data Science is the more focused area of Statistics that focuses on insights from data residing in the business world. Bottom line is that it would behoove business project teams to include a data scientist. Northwestern University has about 6 programs in the subject area, so seems to be leading the field.
And that is just a taste of the tech flavors that we cooked into the IMA 2015 Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
Stay tuned for a more detailed blog posting from other Committee members with their feedback and impressions.
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Christopher Mishler, CMA, CIA, CISA
Chair, Tech Solutions & Practices
Global Subject Matter Expert - User-Developed Applications Risk
Experis Finance
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