-: Hello, and welcome to this overview
of module one of digital finance.
My name is Courtney,
and I'll be giving you a quick few minute overview
to help you prepare yourself as you study this module.
So nothing to do with digital finance,
but everything to do with the idea
of transformation and innovation.
What we do at one point in time seems to be normal.
So for hundreds of years, agriculture was done by hand
we occasionally used animals and tools,
but it was hard work
and the majority of the population did it.
And only a few others got to work in other areas.
But as we had the industrial revolution
and as we became more efficient
and things like combined harvesters
and giant tractors came along, along with fertiliser,
we were able to expand our food production,
but significantly drop the number of people involved.
And so that transformation is the kind of image
I want to put in your mind as you read about
digital finance,
as you read new ways of doing business,
new ways of doing financing,
the efficiencies and the automation and the data,
and the analysis is incredibly powerful.
Another example of transformation now
in the manufacturing realm,
we go back to sort of 15, 16 years,
and we see General Motors versus Toyota.
Now General Motors taking 34 hours or so to build a car
versus Toyota about 28, but also the labour costs
of General Motors and Toyota, quite different.
So who is going to compete more efficiently?
It's really obvious that Toyota
is going to smash General Motors
because it makes the cars faster
and therefore it's cost to lower,
its productivity is more efficient
and that's what we're looking for.
So when we talk about early adoption of digital strategies,
early transformation, putting in these new measures,
this is why your competitors are going to be doing it,
or you're going to be doing it.
Someone is going to be winning.
And as in I gave the farming example,
now I look at manufacturing. By 2021, 16 years later,
Toyota has shaved off another 10 hours
in terms of the car build time.
Now we're looking at 30,000 components being put together
and they can do it 10 hours faster.
So that is the amazing leap forward
that we are going to expect
as we move into this digital realm.
So it's critical for you to understand it
and be a part of it and implement it.
So part A talks about the digital finance landscape,
and I just want to tie off the module one objectives.
So evaluate the complexity of digital transformation
and its impact on the work of accounting
and finance professionals.
Now, interestingly, an article just came out
on the 23rd of June, 2021,
and we see that accountants are prioritised
at the top of skilled migration Australia.
They're really important,
accountants, taxation accountants, management accountants,
external auditors and internal auditors, fabulous.
But what's really interesting
is that we hear that National Australia Bank
is cost cutting as it decides to go for simpler faster bank.
We have lawyers, accountants joining the list of workers
who are going to lose their jobs to AI.
High vulnerability report,
look at accountants and auditors
and then payroll and timekeepers
and then tax preparers, incredibly vulnerable
because things are being automated.
Data analysis, machine learning,
artificial intelligence is replacing people.
So your career one way or the other for positive or not
is going to change.
So we'll just have to analyse the complexity
associated with practical implementation of the technologies
and support the adoption of digital technologies.
And there's a lot of discussion in the
study guide
of agile type method.
So agile, when you do software development or projects,
it's quick, iterative, prototypes, lots of movement,
whereas waterfall the old way,
do things really slowly step by step by step,
you do everything right,
and it takes years and often never gets implemented.
So waterfall has some benefits because it's more rigorous,
but it often leads to lethargy and inaction.
So how can you do agile project management?
That's a key component discussed in part A
and module one and throughout.
So your learning objectives were 20% of the exam,
which is 15 out of the 75 marks.
So part A looks at the landscape of digital finance
what's going on, so it talks about industry big data,
the three A's of automation, the four V's of big data
and the accounting and finance function being transformed.
So it moved towards a digital mindset, data analysis skills,
finance skills, combined with behavioural skills
and being more agile and able to support with funding.
So figure 1.1 is a really good snapshot
of all the different things that are happening
in digital finance.
And we will be exploring these a little bit in module one,
and then in much more detail in later modules.
Some good examples keep popping up as well.
So there's that theory side
and we use some Airwallex examples
throughout the study guide.
BrewDog is a good example of some crowdfunding
and a new product.
So yes, it's a traditional product beer.
It's been around thousands of years,
but new and innovative ways of financing
the development of that organisation.
Then we'll look at different areas of innovation
and how to make change, and one of the key things,
normally when people innovate, they focus on the product.
But this is a very low portion
of where value has been created in the last decade,
finance business models and networking along with processes
that's where all of the value creation from innovation
has been coming from.
Then we look at the evolution of money,
a little bit in how technology has transformed banking
and financial markets, right up to the cryptocurrencies
and what's going on there,
and you may or may not be investing in that area,
it's a pretty volatile space.
Then part B of module one looks at the finance ecosystem,
what's going on?
How does it all combine together?
So key components, software, data, and ICT infrastructure.
And a practical example of this is, is the e-payment system.
So do you have an eWallet?
You know Credit cards have been around for decades,
but eWallets a little bit less tap and go,
NFC and people using their phones much more readily
to just quickly transfer money,
to transfer money by text message,
items like that and even blockchain,
that idea of distributed ledgers
and coming into the e-payment realm.
So then we move into FinTech
and the innovations that are happening
that are transforming the environment
even more rapidly than before.
It's a whole lot of FinTech,
you know, you all have heard of the most obvious ones,
crypto and Bitcoin and big data, online banking,
you may not have heard of APIs, but that's sort of the tech,
the coding that makes a lot of this magic happen.
Then there's some regulatory type areas
AML, anti-money laundering is also just as important.
With FinTech as funds are transferring around the world
so rapidly, better supervision
supervising and regulation is critical.
And then emerging trends,
so, you know, have you heard of edge computing?
Do you see how it works?
The internet of things is another fancy term.
Lots of people talking about the cloud,
interestingly, a decade ago,
most people hadn't really heard about the cloud
and if they had, it was just a hypothetical concept.
Now it's just sort of ubiquitous,
it's absolutely everywhere.
And part D, digital transformation.
How does change happen?
And a good example and I've mentioned this briefly
as well in the subject overview is,
Xero the accounting software provider
did a great example of a digital transformation project
and just how complicated it is.
So this one, they migrated 1.4 petabytes of data,
they had to transfer it from their servers into the cloud,
run their systems parallel
to make sure that they were working efficiently
and release it.
It's expensive, it's time-consuming,
it's really, really difficult.
So managing a two year project with hundreds,
if not thousands of people with millions of customers,
you've got to get it right.
And there's a lot of obstacles and a lot of problems
that are sometimes technology-based, sometimes people-based.
So an interesting article here showing that 84%
of these digital transformation projects fail.
So if they don't deliver the right outcomes,
what's going wrong?
As future accounting and finance professionals,
we need to be able to implement these effectively.
So the role of accounting and finance professionals,
understanding this work, implementing this work,
supervising this work, regulating this work,
it's going to be a busy time for people in this realm.
So that's the quick overview,
time for you to dive into the deep reading
and videos as we go through this module, thanks.